


Cedarwood Kingdom

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Ajay is the Sheriff, Alternate Universe - Western, Bar Room Brawl, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas, Complete, Drinking, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Pagan is a Wanted Man, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, There Was Only One Bedroll, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: Pagan Min.  A polite, polished gentleman who also happens to be a rowdy, drunken carouser.  A charming liar and a professional thorn in his side.  Even worse than his knack for getting into fistfights is the fact that he cheats at cards.But despite his penchant for starting trouble, Sheriff Ghale always did like the man.  Which is good, since he's managed to get himself trapped in a tiny, makeshift lean-to with him and his cantankerous horse in a howling blizzard.
Relationships: Ajay Ghale/Pagan Min
Comments: 54
Kudos: 60





	1. The Blizzard

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, little fandom that I love so much!
> 
> I've been working on this for a couple of months now as a kind of fandom present, and I'll be posting regular updates from now through the holidays.
> 
> Oh, and this one comes with a playlist!
> 
> [Cedarwood Kingdom](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8s2UX4YdeXWxJB8X8yAwfutEsBh3FaCz)
> 
> Thank you, [xXscreensaverXx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXscreensaverXx/pseuds/xXscreensaverXx), [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss), and [Thegirlnamedhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegirlnamedhawk/pseuds/Thegirlnamedhawk) for being such wonderful beta readers. You guys really are the best.
> 
> [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss) in particular helped with a lot of the brainstorming on this fic. Thank you, friend!

_***_

_December 24th, 1893_  
_Not much to report. Folks are mostly staying out of trouble, it being Christmastime. Rode out to the Macklin place earlier today on account of an accusation of cattle thievery, but they’d just wandered over onto old man Barlow’s land and got mixed up with his herd. Macklin’s boy rounded them up and got them back._

_Real slow day. But slow’s good._

A sound permeates Sheriff Ghale’s thoughts, the kind of thing that he realizes he’s been hearing for a while now. Two whistling notes, one low and one high, rising and falling. He sets the pen down and closes the logbook, and when he strides to the heavy oaken door and pulls it open the howling wind gusts and nearly yanks the door handle from his hand. That same gust flings snow all over him as he stands there dumbfounded, looking out onto a swirling, gray-white wall.

Well, shit.

Not four hours ago the day had been fine and sunny, if cold; it had been the sound of the increasing wind moaning through the eaves of the combined jail and Sheriff’s office that brought him to the door to take a look. At first he had thought the noise was coming from Paul Harmon’s saloon, conveniently located right next door.

As is usual in little frontier towns like Elk River, the saloon's the center of social life, the only two-story building in town. Bar on the ground floor and little rooms for Noore’s girls to entertain their clientele in on the second. It being Christmas Eve isn’t slowing business down much, frontier residents generally not being big on religious sentiment. Even in the middle of a blizzard, the place blazes with light and thumps with honkytonk piano tunes, although both are muted. The lamplight from the windows makes little headway in the murk, the music muffled by the wind.

When Ajay peers out into the whirling snow, he finds that he can see perhaps five feet in front of him, just to the edge of the porch rail where the white drifts are quickly building. Quickly enough that he thinks he had better lock up and skedaddle home, right across Main Street. It’s close enough that he could generally toss a rock across the wide dirt road from where he’s standing and hit his front door easily.

Not today. Hell, he didn’t even wear his thick coat or his heavy winter boots, just denims and his shearling leather jacket and his beat-up old hat. Not even a scarf.

He can’t see for shit but there’s no way he can miss his own front door, not even thirty feet away. He flips his collar up against the blowing gale and pulls his gloves on, jams his hat down on his head as tightly as it will go, lines up his trajectory, and steps off the boardwalk into that whirling white wall.

Ten minutes later, he curses his own stupidity and realizes that not only is he going to die out here, that he’ll have plenty of time to contemplate and regret the idiot mistake that killed him.

Somehow, some way, he managed to get himself turned around out here, overshot his mark. It can’t have been by hardly anything. He’d turned right around when he counted off thirty paces and didn’t hit the boardwalk on the other side as he should’ve, made a careful, one-eighty degree turn…but his tracks were already gone, too windy and dark to see them. But he made an exact about-face anyway, or what had felt like it, and gone back the way he had come. And failed to hit that boardwalk as well.

Anger at first, that he’s been such an idiot. He knows better than to walk anywhere he can’t see in a storm like this, without even a rope to follow. And then that anger had turned to fear, panic that he keeps relentlessly pushing down. Panic will kill him faster than the snow and ice, the howling wind. Already the drifts are up to his knees, soaking his jeans and wearing at his strength.

 _Here,_ that wind seems to whistle in his ear. _A few more steps, and there will be the corner of a building. Just here. Warmth, and light, and friendly voices._ And then, _oh, but maybe it’s over here instead?_ Making a mockery of him.

Ajay Ghale’s legs quiver under him, his teeth chattering, his strength nearly spent in a mere twenty minutes of this, and wonders if it might not be easier to just sit down where he is and let the snow take him. He’s had twenty-seven years here in this world, and for the most part, they’ve been pretty decent. Some niggling concern worms its way through the increasing cloudiness in his mind, and he realizes with a start that he’s already sitting down without having consciously decided to do it. That terrifies him all over again and sends him scrambling to his feet and nearly tearing his knees in his fright. He makes it five or six running, sliding, stumbling steps before his sense returns with a hard shudder, his skin twitching all over like a spooked horse.

 _What you’re looking for is over here,_ the wind whistles playfully in his ear, like a mad thing. _Right over here, just a few more steps…or could it be over there?_

Ignoring it, he concentrates on flapping his arms, stomping his feet to get his blood moving again. He’s starting to lose the feeling in his toes, unsure if they’re just cold or if the waterproofing on his boots has given out.

Almost too tired to shiver now. His teeth have nearly stopped their chattering as the voice of the wind takes on a different quality. Almost as if it’s a man calling his name over and over. Hoarse and rough, on the edge of panic. He ignores that trickery as well.

But there seems to be something wrong with his eyes too, not just his ears, as he rubs at them with the back of his ice-encrusted glove. A golden glow shines in them as he wanders aimlessly in the murk, probably in circles by this point. It grows brighter, and then brighter still as he stumbles to a confused halt.

A hand seizes his shoulder, _hard,_ and he nearly screams.

_“Damnfool boy!!”_

The bellowing voice that rings out is for a moment loud enough to overcome the howling of the storm. A huge white shape moves close, engulfed in that golden glow and nearly knocking him over but for that hand clamped down tight on him, nearly to the point of pain even through the leather of his jacket. It takes his muzzy brain whole seconds to realize that the immense shape is a horse and rider covered with blown snow, the gold light is coming from the lantern held in the man’s other hand, and that he knows that voice. Raspy with the cold, but still elegant, precise, and sounding madder than a kicked hornet’s nest.

No, that voice doesn’t belong out here in the _slightest._ And yet…

The man leans over, dumping snow from the brim of his hat into his upturned face. He jerks his scarf down, and sure enough, Pagan Min’s fierce, narrowed eyes stare back at him, his thick dark eyelashes and eyebrows gone all white with frost. The contrast with his still-black mustache and goatee might be comical in other circumstances.

A polite, polished gentleman who also happens to be a rowdy, drunken carouser, a charming liar. A professional thorn in his side. Even worse than his knack for getting into fistfights is the fact that he cheats at cards. But despite his penchant for starting trouble, he always did like the man. Likes him even more now, another living being out here with a tight hold on him that won’t let him fall as he sags in relief.

“I saw you step off that fucking boardwalk from the window at Paul’s,” he roars, shaking him a little like a disobedient puppy, even as he kicks his foot out of a stirrup for him. He has to bend over further to hold it for him when he can’t manage to get his boot into it. “Had to get up and leave my whiskey and feel my way over to the stable to saddle up Beauregard, and let me tell you, he was no more amused than I. And Paul’s worthless ass didn’t even have a _rope_ I could tie off, no, not that imbecile! And here I thought you were a _smart man,_ Sheriff Ghale, I really did…” And with that drags him aboard behind him. Ajay clings to the thick wool of his overcoat and isn’t too proud to lean his forehead gratefully against the back of his shoulder, a point of solidity in a world gone to featureless white.

Rescue from an extremely unlikely source, as Pagan continues his tirade into the whistling gale that only sounds like ordinary wind now.

***


	2. China and Britannia

***

Rescued though he might be, but neither of them are out of danger yet. Pagan gives Beauregard his head, trusting him to find his way back to the stables in town. But already he can feel the big horse start to falter under them, too much weight and the occasional big drift nearly up to his chest as he fights his way through them. The third time he feels the animal stumble, he leans forward to yell in Pagan’s ear.

“We need to get off, let him rest for a minute!” But even as he says it he wonders if that’s a good idea at all as the snow relentlessly splatters them dead sideways, whipped by that fearsome wind. If they stop moving, the horse could get chilled past his limit to bear, unable to go on.

If that happens, they’re both dead men.

Before that thought can settle colder than the snow in the pit of his stomach, Pagan half-turns to answer him…and is promptly whacked in the face by a tree branch, nearly losing his hat in the process. As he cusses the air blue, Ajay ducks around his arm to see several more branches faintly illuminated in the yellow lamplight. A stand of pine. Beauregard brought them to shelter, of a sort. The horse shudders all over, nearly done in as he quickly slides off.

Under the big pines the snow is much shallower, only ankle deep as he totters on legs that feel like watersoaked logs under him, heavy and numb. Just being out of that buffeting wind makes it feel nearly warm.

But that’s a trick too, the air is just as cold and he’s just as wet. They have work to do.

Wordlessly, Pagan pushes a saddle knife into his hands and draws his own from the back of his belt and they get busy cutting pine branches. After he has a stack he leaves Pagan to keep hacking at them in feverish haste as he stomps around to pack down the snow, still not able to feel his feet at all. He pushes that twinge of fear down too. No time for it, as he marks a rough line with his heel and quickly sharpens the ends of the branches and drives them as deeply into the half-frozen dirt as he can. Pagan brings him more as they work on in silent haste to get shelter and fire as quick as they can.

While Pagan goes to unsaddle Beauregard and rub him down with the saddle blanket, he revises his earlier estimate and makes their crude shelter a little bigger. Have to fit the horse in with them too, after all.

Once he trims off the green boughs and lays them over top to make a rough thatch, it’s not too bad. Keep the snow off at least, hold the heat in a little. Pagan cuts more boughs and covers the snow inside their lean-to with a thick layer of them for insulation. Amazingly, Pagan’s asshole of a horse ducks his head under the low roof and walks in of his own accord, tucks his feet under himself and settles down as comfortably as if it were his own stable. But as Pagan walks by, he aims a sly bite at his ass. Without even bothering to look back, Pagan swats him across the nose to dissuade him of the notion.

It looks to him like this is a long-running argument.

“Should cut his balls off,” Ajay says sagely, from where he’s breaking off dry, dead under branches with his gloved hands so they can get a fire going. “That’d set him right.”

Pagan snorts. “What, and alter his oh-so-sweet personality?” He digs around in his saddlebags and comes up with a tinder box, which he tosses to Ajay. “You hear that? Behave yourself, you glue-factory reject, or the good Sheriff Ghale will come chop your _cojones_ clean off and I won’t do a damn thing to stop him.”

That makes him laugh, despite everything.

Thankfully his fingers are warmer and much more dexterous than his toes, but the wind keeps swirling prankishly around the sides of their shelter and scattering the sparks that he tries to direct into the little nest of tinder he’s made for them. About the fifth time it happens he grunts in frustration at the dark, the wind, the whole situation. Himself making such a dumb kid mistake as to walk off that fucking porch.

“Here,” Pagan says by his shoulder, and brings the lamp closer and kneels down beside him. He tugs his gloves off with his teeth and leans forward to guard the sparks with his bare hands, creating a windblock, and this time when he strikes Pagan’s flint and steel it starts to smolder. He quickly lays it down and adds his hands too. So close together that their shoulders touch, their fingertips touch, their breaths frosting gently and mixing with the thin thread of smoke as they protect that minuscule flame together. A tiny spark of heat and light to keep the two of them alive there in the roaring, icy dark.

Soon that little flame grows enough for him to start adding sticks to it, just tiny twigs at first, and then bigger and bigger pieces. When he gets it to where it really takes, they both sigh with relief. Pagan drags his stuff over, the saddlebags and what turns out to be a bedroll wrapped in a big oilcloth to keep it dry, miracle of miracles. He unrolls it to give them a warmer place to sit, and once the fire gets going good they wrap the stiff waterproof canvas around them both, making a mini lean-to inside their bigger one. It reflects the fire’s heat back at them nicely and Ajay hums in appreciation. Tonight might not be too awfully bad after all. He’d anticipated a miserable, shivering night buried up in sticky evergreen boughs.

Once they’ve gotten their little camp situated to about as good as they’re going to get, Pagan douses the lantern to save the lamp oil. Ajay gingerly removes his own boots, and when he gets his wet socks peeled off Pagan makes himself comfortable beside him on the bedroll and gestures for a foot.

“Not frostbit…just a little nipped perhaps,” he proclaims, after a minute or two of close examination in the firelight, and Ajay slumps back onto his elbows in pure relief. Pagan sandwiches his feet between his warm hands, so warm it burns against his icy skin.

“You’re bein’ awfully sweet for somebody who called their Sheriff a damnfool boy not an hour ago,” he says, wiggling his toes against Pagan’s palms to help get the circulation back.

“Mmm. Don’t go telling folks that I’m a sweet man. I’ve a reputation to maintain, you know.”

Back to his usual cheerful self again, like he doesn’t have a care in the world and is perfectly content to be trapped in this tiny, makeshift lean-to with a lawman and a cantankerous horse in a howling blizzard. But unlike him, Pagan was actually dressed for this weather; long, heavy wool overcoat and scarf over his usual black jacket and fancy silk waistcoat and thick wool trousers.

When his feet are sufficiently warmed, Pagan toes his big riding boots off and wiggles his socked feet while he gets his own damp and half-frozen pant legs as close to the licking flames as he dares without setting himself afire.

If they had something to eat, it’d be pretty damn fine indeed.

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have anything like supper in those bags, would you?”

“Boy, you read my fucking mind,” Pagan says jovially, and gets to rummaging.

Ajay knows better than to take that personally. Hell, Pagan refers to men twenty years his senior as ‘boy,’ blithely unaware of the insult. Or maybe he just doesn’t give a shit. One’s just as likely as the other, really.

Supper indeed turns up when Pagan utters a sound of triumph and holds up a leather bag. Unfortunately, it ends up only being one hardtack biscuit apiece, a chunk of jerky that has the consistency of their firewood and half a hip flask of whiskey, which they pass back and forth with measured sips. Pagan, ever the gentleman, carefully saws the jerky in two and offers him a fair half. The hardtack tastes pretty much like the leather bag it was stored in and it’s not nearly enough to quiet the gnawing feeling in his belly, but the admittedly fine whiskey goes down a treat. Woody and smoky and good, heating him all the way to his middle. Things could be worse. Things could be so much worse and he grins at his new campmate, Pagan’s good cheer infectious.

A few nips of that whiskey and the sheer relief that his fuckup _probably_ isn’t going to kill them doesn’t hurt a thing.

It isn’t long before that roaring, whipping wind starts to die down a bit, and once it does their little shelter gets downright toasty. Enough so that Pagan pulls his own coat and hat off, but the scarf he wraps around Ajay’s shoulders.

“Just until you dry out, my boy. Wouldn’t want our good Sheriff to catch cold, now would we?” At Ajay’s look Pagan grins again, that mischievous smile that makes him almost handsome in a sharp, foxy kind of way. He leaves it on without complaint, still shivering a little. No idea what kind of wool it’s made of but it’s the softest, warmest scarf he’s ever felt, dyed a rich maroon. Probably cost half a year’s worth of his wages.

When he pulls his own once white, beat-to-hell old Stetson off, he scratches at his scruffy jaw and rakes a hand a little self-consciously through his hair, not that it ever does any good. It insists on always sticking up, hat or no hat, in sharp contrast to Pagan’s neat shock of dark hair. Although he wears his shaved down so short on the back and sides it’s not like there’s really anything to be messy. _Don’t your ears get cold,_ he wants to ask him, _especially with that metal in the one?_ But that’s hardly mannerly. Strange to see an earring on a man, especially one who’s not a pirate or something, but it sort of suits him.

They sit there side by side in companionable silence, huddled close enough under the oilcloth that their knees touch and occasionally passing Pagan’s flask. Nothing to do but watch the crackling fire, the snow falling thick and silent at the edge of the orangish-yellow light. He figures it might be true dark by this time.

“So what’s your story, Mr. Min?” The whiskey glows warmly in his belly, prompting him to speak when he probably otherwise wouldn’t. His deputy’s always complaining about how quiet he is.

“Pagan, if you please, Sheriff. Just Pagan. We’ve played enough hands together at Paul’s to warrant first names, don’t you think?” He grins widely again, and Ajay’s close enough that he catches the flash of a gold tooth at the very corner of his mouth, gold that matches the earring. “And this may be entirely vain of me, but I don’t fancy myself old enough to be Mr. Min. At least, not quite yet.”

“Ajay, then.” He smiles a little himself. “Just Ajay.”

“Just Ajay.” When Pagan says his name, it comes out almost like a purr, dark and warm, and he likes it, likes the way his name fits in his mouth. Before he can really think that over though, Pagan cocks his head.

“What makes you think that I have a story?”

“Everybody that washes up in this town has a story.”

“Well, that might be true,” Pagan says. “But I can’t promise it’s an _entertaining_ one.” While his voice is still light he can feel him tense up a little where their legs touch, as if this might be an uncomfortable subject.

Ajay makes a show of looking him over, taking him in from head to toe. “Oh no, I don’t think you got to worry about that at all.”

“Hmm…in that case, perhaps I ought to start at the beginning.”

At first Pagan sounds a little forced, the words and the cadence stiff, but he seems to warm up to the task as he goes. He’s a good storyteller, he’ll give him that. But then again he figured he would be. Ajay’s eyes stare into the hot coals of their fire but his mind is full of the picture Pagan paints with his words, the two of them off in faraway Hong Kong. He can all but see the boy that Pagan was, bright brown eyes set in a foxy little face, his dark hair always threatening to trail into one of them. That little boy picking himself up out of the dust and staunching the blood from his nose with his sleeve, and how those eyes grew harder and harder as the years went by.

“I’m just like the city herself, half China and half Britannia, but that certainly didn’t endear me to her residents. The year I turned eleven, my father shipped me off to boarding school in London, and I probably don’t have to tell you that those boys were no more welcoming of my half-breed self than the ones back home. Good thing I grew quickly! By the time I was, oh, fourteen or so, none of those little shits stood a chance.” He reaches out and adds another piece of wood to their fire, carefully tilting the new piece against the others in a shower of gold sparks. “So when I finished my education my father sent me a letter that more or less said, ‘I’m in America, in California, come and meet me there. Your mother is dead.’ As baldly put as that, the bastard. So I went to him, not really knowing what else to do. Boarded a ship and sailed for Ellis and as soon as I was through the gates the Union recruiters were waiting to snatch me up.”

“So you were in the war.”

He laughs ruefully. “No, I wasn’t. They signed me up against my will, made a mark on their little roster as if I were an illiterate peasant and tried to ship me off to the fucking Carolinas. I turned tail and ran for it at the first opportunity.” Pagan gazes off into the dark for a few moments, just watching the snow fall. “So as far as I know I’m still wanted by the Federals, for desertion. And what do you think of that, Sheriff Gha…Ajay?” There’s a tiny gleam of…something in those sharp eyes. A challenge, a dare.

“What I think,” he says slowly, “is that if it had happened to me just that way, I would probably have done the same thing.”

Pagan lets out a small sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath.

“I was still just a boy, really,” he says softly, gazing into the flame. It’s a while before he says anything else, and Ajay hands the flask off so he can take a fortifying sip. When he speaks again, it’s much more cheerful.

“However, I did manage to make it out to California in one piece! More or less, anyway.”

“And your father was there waiting for you?”

“Oh yes! He gripped me by the shoulders and said ‘I’m so glad to see you son, I have a lot of work for you to do.’ I hadn’t seen him in six years. Hadn’t seen either of them since I was eleven, and not one single word about her, my mother who gave up _so much_ for that ass. I deeply suspect he had something to do with her death but I’ll never know, because I ended up killing him _myself_ the next year!”

Ajay suspects that he said it that way in an attempt to shock him, so that Pagan could gauge the depth of his moral outrage. But if being a lawman has taught him anything at all, it’s that every story has two sides. And often many more than that. As many as there are participants in it.

“How’d all that go down,” is all he says, low and quiet, knee still pressed up against his.

Pagan snorts. “It didn’t take me long to figure out how he was making his money. His _fortune._ Because, let me tell you, he was raking it in hand over fist by smuggling in opium…and people as well, a bloody fucking slaver. Workers for the railroad and girls for the brothels. Are you familiar with the term ‘shanghaied?’ Well, it happens in Hong Kong too,” he says darkly, and takes another slow meditative sip.

“So I take it you weren’t too happy with this whole business.”

“Dear Ajay, you have a gift for understatement,” he says drily. “He expected me to keep an eye on the ‘merchandise’ and to help him broker deals with the railroad barons for said ‘merchandise.’ The opium was one thing, but…I put up with that shit for a few months, of being squashed under his thumb before I’d had enough of it. We were both drunk, we argued, I blew his fool head off.”

At that, Pagan looks at him askance with the tiniest of smirks and that same almost-challenge in his eyes.

“So, my boy…here I am, wanted by both the Federals and the great State of California, although personally I believe you should all be thanking me. For doing the world the favor of removing that black-hearted fuck from this mortal coil. Hell, you ought to deputize me for it! And what do you think of _that?_ ”

“One deputy’s plenty,” he says, in the same dry tone. “But…again, if it was just like you said, I might’ve done the very same thing.”

A flare of surprise in Pagan’s face at that, surprise that turns to something like approval as he smiles. A very different smile than his usual. This one is small, and warm, and goes all the way to his eyes with a little crinkling at the corners.

Something about that warmly approving gaze makes his cheeks flush, but it could just as well be the cold, or the whiskey, or…

“Well,” Pagan says with a wry chuckle, looking down at his own hands. His face and ears might be a little pink too. For the same reasons. “Well.”

As a distraction, he says, “So obviously you couldn’t stay in California after that. Just wandered your way here?” After all, it’s what he himself did. Kept moving until he found a place that seemed like it might be worth staying for.

“I think after climbing up and over those mountains I was too tired to keep going! But perhaps I was also just sick of running by then. Bought the ranch with my father’s ill-gotten gains, settled in, I daresay you know the rest of it. But what about _you,_ ” Pagan says, his eyes bright with interest. “I’m sure that’s one hell of a story.”

“Nah. I mean, not especially.” He’s never exactly been comfortable talking about himself. Or really at all. But there’s only the dark, the cold. Nothing but time, nothing to do but talk.

“I highly doubt that. Please, I’m curious.” Pagan nudges his knee against his leg companionably. “Start at the beginning.”

***


	3. Where the Ganges Starts

***

Ajay sighs and rubs his nose, just a little unnerved to be the object of Pagan’s rapt attention. But fair’s fair, after all.

“Well, I was born in a little village up in the Himalayas, in the Kingdom of Kyrat, but I honestly don’t remember it ‘cause I was still toddling when my mother left. She told me that they had a civil war up there too, and she carried me on her hip over those big mountains, near where the Ganges starts and then down into British India. All the way to Patna.”

“Bloody fucking hell,” his audience sputters. “And you thought this somehow _wouldn’t_ make for a good story…but my apologies for the interruption. By all means, continue!”

“Um, we stayed there for a couple of years and then she decided that she should bring me up in America, that it would be better for us here. And that’s how we ended up in California, she was…oh hell, I don’t know what you’d call it, like a religious figure back home. Almost like a princess or a priestess or something, and that’s how we had money to pay for passage. But that didn’t stretch real far, so soon as I got big enough I started working, whatever I could get.” He picks up the stick they’ve been using as a makeshift poker and prods at the coals with it, watches the end of it go up in yellow flame. He’s never talked about the next part. “I was older than you were when you lost your mama, but not by much when she got sick and died on me.”

“I’m so sorry, boy.” Real sympathy in his voice, but Ajay avoids looking at him, just in case it’s visible in his eyes as well. Not sure how well he could handle that.

“It’s…shit happens. It just does. It’s a hard ol’ world, is all, wasn’t nothing anybody could do.”

“What about your father?”

“Died back in Kyrat, in that war.”

“Well, that might very well be for the best. Fathers aren’t of much account overall, at least in my book.”

That gets a dark laugh out of him. “Yeah, you might be right about that.”

“So, we ended up roughly in the same place, you and I. Two motherless sons from over the ocean and so far west that it becomes the East again. I take it you also took up the wandering life,” Pagan says gently.

“Yeah, I just…there wasn’t anybody or anything to keep me there, so I just drifted along to where the work was, roping, branding, any kind of ranch work. The big places always need extra hands during roundup, and after the season was over I’d move on. Did some herding, that kinda thing. Winters I’d drift south, summers I’d head north…and one day I saw those big ol’ mountains on the horizon. Bigger than the Sierra Madre, all snowy at the top, and that seemed like something worth seeing so I just kept heading that way. Hit the foothills and kept going, up and over. And like you, since I was so tired out after all that I decided to stay right here, at least for a little while.”

“A fine little town. Nice and peaceable…for the most part, anyway.”

Now it’s his turn to snort. “Hah! Chock full of ingrates who don’t know how good they got it, you mean. I rode right into the hornet’s nest. That stupid Farmer’s Association against the Rancher’s Association business. Sabal and Amita squaring off and half the damn town ready to take up arms against the other half.”

“And you came in and knocked those imbecile’s heads together,” Pagan says, again with that note of warm approval. “Oh, I’m so glad you did, you have no idea. I was this close to shooting one or the other of them…perhaps both,” and with a glance at his face Ajay sees that he absolutely means it. “The two of them always _pushing_ at me, attempting to find the limits of my saintly patience. Amita and her lot always running their cattle on my land, thinking I wouldn’t notice, Sabal and his miscreants plotting their fields over onto my property. Things have been quiet since you came along and whipped them into shape. And that speech you gave? Downright fucking inspired, my boy. I put my hand up with the rest that night.”

Neither of them had shown him a bit of respect until he’d beat the shit out of some of their people and waved his gun in both their faces, but why _should_ they have respected him? He was a nobody, some no-account drifter…but one that had grown mighty tired of watching folks fight each other, rip everything apart, burn everything good down to the ground.

Somehow, for some reason, he’d gone and fallen in love with the place, enough so that he was willing to fight for it. He’d marched his ass up to the front of that town hall meeting and yanked his hat off and proceeded to give the talk of his life, _him_ of all people. He didn’t know where it came from, or even precisely what he’d said, besides the need to stand together…it had just bubbled out of him, fiery and indignant.

Shocked silence had followed.

He stood there illuminated in the gaslight in front of that crowd with ice in his belly and no idea what they’d do, if they’d go surly on him. They might just string him up, unappreciative of his opinions and his meddling in their affairs.

A woman’s voice had called out from near the back. Miss Noore, the town’s madam.

‘A show of hands, to make Ghale here our new Sheriff. Because it sure as hell seems like we need one.’

And that had been that.

“I just…maybe I got mountains in my blood, I don’t know. Just wanted some peace.” An answer to a question that Pagan didn’t really ask, but he felt like saying it anyway. He takes a little sip from Pagan’s flask and when he passes it back, warm fingers brush against his.

“And you’ve done a fine job of keeping that peace too! Why, I believe I might be the only _real_ troublemaker left in town.”

Something about him saying that pangs sharply in his chest. Maybe it’s the dark, the whiskey, the near-death scrape he got himself into, but he finds himself grabbing hold of Pagan’s sleeve.

“Hey, I never said thank you, for coming out here to get me and risking your life for mine,” but Pagan waves his other hand airily like there was no need for it, no need to thank him. “No, I was an idiot and should of been more careful…but Pagan, you gotta be more careful too. One of these days you’re gonna get yourself into a situation you can’t get out of, somebody’s just going to pull leather and shoot you down…”

Pagan looks at him, glances down at the hand gripping his sleeve and then back up to his face, a question in his eyes.

“Now tell me Ajay…why the hell do you care what happens to a lying, cheating, sinning, degenerate old drunken half-breed chinaman like me?”

Not a trace of anger in his voice at all, just confusion, like he really _doesn’t_ know why anybody should care about him. Or like maybe he’s just a little dense for doing so. And there’s suddenly so much to say to that, right on the tip of his tongue.

_Because, despite you being the devil’s own rogue you still have a kind of nobility about you, like a king down on his luck and that old ranch is your kingdom, and under all that bravado and the lies I think that you’re a decent man who got dealt a shit hand in life. When you look at me with your eyes sparkling and that mischievous grin like you do, I don’t know what to think of it. How to feel about it._

Spurned on by Pagan’s good whiskey he nearly blurts it all out, but manages to rein in that confession with effort.

Instead, he takes the much safer route. “It’s my job to care about what happens to you. You and all the other townsfolk.” And makes himself let go of his sleeve.

And Pagan rolls his eyes and huffs out a breath that smokes in the cold and makes him feel like maybe that was the wrong thing to say.

“Oh, well, if it’s your _job_ to. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it?”

How to respond to the tiny twinge of bitterness in his voice eludes him, and Pagan doesn’t say anything more. The silence between them is broken only by the crackling fire, and faintly, the wind out there still howling over the prairie. Ordinarily he’d never be the one to break a quiet streak, but tonight another voice comes strangely welcome. He shifts the topic away from that uncomfortable one about _caring._

“At least you’re not one of the ones that voted me in and then turned around and complained that I was too young for the job, or whined about how I was running things, or sat around trying to guess where I was from and coming to the conclusion that I must be Mexican instead of just coming and asking me like would have been _polite,_ ” and now Pagan looks a little dumbfounded.

“What, or I guess _who_ in the wor…”

“I overheard Paul one day when I was in the saloon having my dinner, thought he was being quiet but of course he wasn’t, he don’t know what that word means. Whispering real loud to one of his barboys. ‘Yeah, I reckon he must’ve drifted in from down Mexico way somewheres. Ghale sounds a lot like Olé, don’t it? That’s Mexi-talk for sure.’ And it kinda stuck. Why, just last week Old Man Barlow’s wife came up to me asking me about making tamales, like how do you do it? I wanted to say lady, I don’t know shit about tamales but I didn’t dare, she has to be at least seventy and I didn’t want her to have a fit or something…”

Pagan’s mouth opens, and then closes. Opens again.

“You…you mean to tell me,” he says, a little strained, “that the whole town thinks…thinks that a man with a name like Ajay Ghale is _Mexican_ because it rhymes with the word Olé?”

And bursts out laughing fit to bust, because when he says it that way it _is_ funny, so idiotically stupid that he can’t help but join in. Pagan tips his head back and laughs so loud it dislodges a little snow that drifts down from the pine branches over their heads, so loudly that Beauregard starts with a snort behind them, whickers in disgust, and shifts around to get comfortable again before he goes right back to sleep.

It feels good to laugh like that, like they don’t have a care in the world. Pagan claps a hand down on his leg like he’s going to tip over, and when they get to where they’re wheezing and wiping away tears, he keeps that hand there. Ajay glances down at it curiously, large and tanned and covered with freckles.

When he doesn’t object to it being there, Pagan leans closer…and slides it right up his thigh.

 _Like a fish,_ is the first thing he thinks. _That’s what my face must look like right now, all google-eyed and my mouth doing that gulping thing._ He turns to stare Pagan straight in the face, takes in his speculative look, his flushed cheeks, that warmth back in his eyes. No, _heat_ in his eyes. For _him._

And like with a lot of situations involving people, he doesn’t know what to do. Like he does just about every time he just…shuts down. Looks away. Stiffens up and pulls away from him.

With a little pat at his leg Pagan takes his hand back.

“I’m sorry, Ajay. It was only a joke, and apparently not a funny one. Please, forgive me,” he says easily.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, knowing full well that it wasn’t. Especially when he risks a glance from the corner of his eye in Pagan’s direction and sees the little slump to his shoulders and the thoughtful way he pokes at their fire.

Neither of them say anything after that, and Pagan polishes off the last mouthful or so in his flask and tucks it back into his bags. Readjusts the stiff oilcloth and wraps his arms around himself, careful to keep space between them. Being a gentleman about it.

He can’t seem to help sneaking little looks at him. Watches as he tucks his chin down on his chest with his socked feet also tucked neatly under him, dark hair falling into one eye. Maybe drifting off a little in the warmth.

It’s certainly not the first time he’s been propositioned. Hell, not even the first from a man, not that he’s real prone to take either one up on it. Doesn’t know why, just…too fast, maybe. He’s one to want to back up and look a thing over. Mostly folks just shrug and move on, soon as he spooks and goes quiet on them.

But out here there’s nowhere for Pagan to go. And when he thinks that offer of his over, what he thinks is that Pagan’s got a couple of decades on him and has been a hellraiser from the cradle. Him a lawman and Pagan a wanted one. But even so, a gentleman that’s obviously trying to give him the space he wants. The space he’s not entirely sure he _actually_ wants…not when he also thinks about his big hands and warm eyes and that sweet little smile, the real one.

That was his voice, out there in the storm. Not the one trying to trick him, but the real one, the one calling out his name over and over again, hoarse and on the verge of panic. Searching and searching for him in a choking whiteout without even a line to lead him home again.

Suddenly spooked for real by that memory and not just standoffish, Ajay reaches out to him without thinking, instinctively seeking another spark of life in all the dark, killing cold that surrounds them. He reaches for his leg without looking…and manages to touch something else.

Accidentally puts his hand right on his dick.

Pagan snorts himself out of a doze much as his horse did, and then _laughs_ at him as he jerks away like he put his hand on a hot coal instead.

“Why, _Ajay,_ ” Pagan says, all mock scandalized and he wishes the earth would just go ahead and swallow him up as his face catches fire. He realizes he’s still wearing Pagan’s scarf, warm and soft around his shoulders and he rips it off and flings it at him, eager to escape. So fucking mortified that sleeping next to Pagan’s sonofabitch horse is suddenly an attractive proposition.

“Wait, don’t…I’m sorry, I oughtn’t have laughed. You just…surprised me, is all.” Before he can get very far, Pagan lays a gentle hand on his arm and he shivers all over, skin twitching. “I’m sorry,” he says again, “come back. Is this all right?” He scoots close and slides that arm around him and presses himself against his side. Solid and warm and he finds himself relaxing against him just a little despite himself.

“Shhh,” Pagan murmurs, low and hypnotic, barely louder than the crackling fire. “Anything you like, anything at all.”

Caught up in the spell of his voice and the heat of his body against his and raw stupidity and impulsive desire, he swallows hard. And slowly reaches out again to rest his hand on Pagan’s belt buckle, the gleam of brass bright in the firelight.

“Ah,” Pagan says, so softly, like he’s trying not to frighten a wild thing. His hand rubs a soothing path up and down his back up under his jacket. “So that _is_ what you’re curious about.” His other hand touches his, the fingers resting lightly on the back of it…and then he reaches underneath to work his belt loose, and he finds that he can’t look away.

He slowly pulls the leather back through the keeper and out of the way, and under his avid gaze Pagan traces the growing bulge with his long fingers, just a little teasing gesture that has him sucking in a breath between his teeth. He pops the top button, and then the next, going faster like he’s beginning to get a little impatient himself. When his hard cock springs free, Ajay clenches his hand in the fine wool of his trouser leg to keep from just _grabbing_ and he wonders what in the holy fuck is wrong with him.

He’s never put his hand on another man like this in his life, but now here he is, wanting to so bad that his fingers twitch, and it’s like Pagan can read his mind.

“You can touch me. It’s all right, I want you to,” against his ear, his voice like rough silk and that good whiskey on his breath and pulled like a magnet, he slides his fingers along the cloth and into his fly and around that heavy, velvety heat.

God.

Running on pure instinct, he tightens his fingers and gives him a little experimental stroke and Pagan shudders gratifyingly against his side, another and his head drops against his like it feels too good to hold it up. It’s somehow a lot like doing it to himself and not like it in the slightest as Pagan gasps and swallows hard, his breathing picking up when he swipes his thumb over the head to collect the moisture already beading at the tip, entranced by how it catches the firelight.

“Oh _fuck,_ that’s good,” he murmurs, and lays his fingers on his wrist and clutches at the back of his shirt and just lets him have his way with him, offering himself with his eyes closed. “If you keep that up, lovely boy, I’m going to, _oh,_ going to come all over your hand.”

There was one time years ago that he let a fellow do this to him, up in Montana on the last night of a cattle drive. A little rough, a little clumsy, but good. Guy seemed happy just to get to do it. Next morning he’d collected his pay and ridden off to his next job without a glance back; it hadn’t _meant_ anything. But it sure seems like it must mean something to Pagan, because he smiles that warm, happy little smile, and without opening his eyes turns his head and tries to kiss him.

And something about that, the surprisingly soft touch of his lips just at the corner of his own mouth is too much, too warm, too close. It sparks that old _run away from this_ impulse in him that wars with the burgeoning heat, a twisting in his belly…and finally wins out. He jerks away with no good idea of why, really, just pushed and pulled in equal measure as he tries not to shake.

Pagan lets out a sound that's almost pained and twists his hand tighter into his shirt for a moment. Only for a moment though before he lets go too, doesn’t try to hang onto him. Just sits there with his eyes still closed and his head tipped back and his chest heaving.

Eventually he raises his head and blinks in the firelight. Reaches down to slowly tuck himself away and refasten his belt. Studiously not looking at him.

Or that’s how it feels, anyway.

“Well, that was _fun,_ wasn’t it? Pfft. I’m going to sleep,” and with that lies down and pulls his coat over himself and slings an arm over his eyes. “Feel free to join me. Or not, if it pleases you.”

With nothing better to do, he lies down beside him on the bedroll and scoots about as far from him as it’s possible to get and still be on it, and Pagan misinterprets it.

“Oh for fuck’s _sake,_ I’m not going to touch your precious pure self with my dirty hands,” and as usual when he’s upset, he finds himself with no words. His voice locked tight in his chest when he wants to tell him…he doesn’t even know, as his shame turns to anger. At Pagan, at himself, at the world. Pointless and childish, but there you have it, as he yanks the edge of the oilcloth down and over them both as protection from the occasional flurry of snowflakes from the branches overhead.

Right at the edge of sleep he feels Pagan stir, and move closer as he reaches to spread half his overcoat out over him. A layer of heavy wool all warm from his body, clean and smelling of cedar, and he finds himself too tired and cold to object to it.

***


	4. Mixed Signals

***

Ajay half-wakes to heavy darkness, to a profound quiet.

The air’s grown stuffy from their exhaled breaths captured under the oilcloth but it’s a wonderfully warm nest all the same. Cozy and drowsy and pine-smelling. He reaches out and lifts a corner to make an air hole and the fabric crackles with a gritty layer of snow and ice, a little pre-dawn light filtering in. At some point in his sleep he cuddled up close to the only heat source and wrapped an arm around it, Pagan’s chest moving steadily, peacefully under his hand. The fire has long since gone out and he can’t seem to make himself move away from the solid comfort of Pagan’s warm back. The rhythm of his breathing against his own body nearly sends him under again, but Pagan shifts a little in his sleep, stretches and relaxes against him.

And that’s the awful moment that he wakes enough to realize that he’s both hard as a rock and tucked firmly up against Pagan’s ass.

“Mmm, change your mind?” Bleary, but obviously awake.

Shit.

Pagan rolls over to face him and runs his big warm hand up under his jacket and along his side with a little chuckle, deep and morning rough. “My, you _do_ know how to give a man mixed signals.”

“Get up,” he says coldly. His voice breaks that peaceful stillness, loud and harsh to his own ears, and Pagan withdraws his hand. “We need to get back to town.” He throws Pagan’s coat off and sits up to pull his now-dry boots on, stands and yanks the oilcloth back to shake the ice off and get it packed up.

Pagan pokes a finger up over the edge of his coat, pulling it down just enough to squint against the light. His eyes meet his, and he can’t even begin to name the look in them, like he can’t figure him out at all. A touch of sadness in them as he looks away.

“I said get up,” and this time he injects a little authority into it. “I don’t want to fuck around out here all day.”

“All right,” is all Pagan says, so quiet, muffled like the thick blanket of snow that lies on everything around them. But once he gets to his feet, he makes a little sarcastic bow in his direction.

“Your wish is my command, dear Sheriff!” And then laughs, low and mocking. Not Ajay anymore. Not after he went and ruined it, the snowy peace of the morning gone. He feels his own face hardening.

No more words after that, working in silence as they get Pagan’s stuff packed up, his horse rubbed down and saddled. Beauregard makes a little sidestep and tries to cowkick him when Pagan tightens the girth strap, as if he knows exactly whose fault it is that they’re heading back out into the cold and snow so early. The horse’s shod foot misses him by inches.

“Jesus,” he mutters. Pagan looks up at him and smiles, but this one’s sharp, a blade to cut himself on.

He stands there and watches the sun come up on what promises to be a beautifully clear, blue sky day as he waits for Pagan to lash his gear back on his horse. It’s never so clear as after a big blow and he can see the low buildings of Elk River from here, not terribly far away. They wandered maybe a mile out onto the prairie, the rocky crags of the Front Range behind town all shaggy-looking with their new coating of snow. 

This stand of pine saved their lives. That and Pagan’s asshole of a horse.

He turns as Pagan swings up into the saddle, and with his hat and scarf on and his coat collar turned up, he can’t see much of his face except for his eyes.

They study him without expression for long seconds.

Maybe he means for him to make his own way back. He could, although some of those drifts are probably as tall as he is, but at least he can see where he’s headed now. He’ll be half-frozen from the waist down by the time he gets there, but…

Pagan interrupts his train of thought by kicking a boot out of the stirrup for him. After a moment’s deliberation he takes that offer silently and swings up behind him. Careful to touch him as little as possible, holding on by just two handfuls of his coat.

Even so, he can still feel it under his hands when Pagan heaves a deep breath and lets it out again in a plume of white.

It takes them less than thirty minutes to traverse the distance that felt like hours last night. A surreal difference with the sun bouncing off the snow blinding white and the still air, the world having grown tired of its own violence.

Pagan pulls up right in front of his little house, the Sheriff’s residence for whoever happens to hold that office. He slides down, neither of them having said a word, but Beauregard snakes his head around to aim a sneaky bite at his shoulder and Pagan fends him off with a hiss and the toe of his boot. This time when Ajay looks up at him, his face is a little softer, his eyes a touch warmer. He seems as if he means to say something, but then changes his mind.

“Sheriff,” is all he says in parting, and with a touch at his hat brim he’s off at a canter down the street, not yet muddy with passing traffic. He can’t shake that sense of the surreal as he stomps the snow off his boots and unlocks the door and goes inside, only then realizing that it’s Christmas Day.

After that, Ajay puts that whole incident out of his mind. Easy enough to do; there’s nearly always work to be done even in the slow season, and him and Deputy Drubman take advantage of it to get the usual midwinter housekeeping tasks out of the way. He always did like Hurk Drubman; local good ol’ boy, has an easy way about him that makes folks trust him. Older than him but doesn’t mind a bit to take his orders. Also doesn’t mind a bit to get his hands dirty, either by making sure all the guns in their little armory are all clean and in good working order or by dispensing a little frontier justice.

His little town isn’t like fucking Cripple Creek or Tincup or any of those lawless places, with shootouts in the streets and with regular folks afraid to poke their heads out of their front doors, no. Together, him and Hurk work hard to maintain an iron-handed peace, and Elk River’s getting to where it has a reputation as a place you don’t start shit in. But since the few bandits and cattle rustlers in these parts tend to hole up in the winter, they also get to do the boring and incredibly dusty task of sorting through the year’s paperwork, getting the records of births and deaths and arrests boxed up and sent off on the next stagecoach headed out to the County seat.

That, and scrub everything down in the office that’ll hold still for long enough. Pretty much business as usual.

It’s on one of those scrubdown days that he goes out onto the porch to stretch his aching back and get some air that’s not thick with the past year’s dirt. The work’s grimy enough to warrant his wearing an old shirt that’s not even worth the effort of patching up anymore, with the sleeves rolled up and soot and stove blacking up to his elbows. He bends over with hands on the knees of his dirty denims and twists a little, popping his spine with a sigh.

The sudden feeling of eyes on him has him raising his own. Pagan Min gazes back at him from across the street, lounging outside of the grocer’s, his sky-blue vest resplendent against his snowy white shirt and black jacket. Elegant. Immaculate. He dearly wishes his hands weren’t so filthy so he could at least tuck his own shirttail back in, that he didn’t look so much like a ratty-ass kid in comparison. Pagan looks him up and down in cool amusement.

“Sheriff,” is all he says, with a touch at his hat brim. Slides his hands into his pockets and wanders back up the boardwalk as easy as you please, a man of leisure taking his leisurely time.

Min seems to keep showing up after that, in random places. No, not random; wherever he happens to be. At the cobbler’s when he’s trying to decide if he should pay to get his old sprung boots repaired for the fifteenth time or bite the bullet on a new pair. Shows up at Paul’s at midday and joins him at his table when he’s having his dinner, and although this in and of itself isn’t unusual, the fact that he doesn’t say a word is. Usually he’s happily talking his ear off. Dispatches his stew neat and quick, but Ajay can feel his eyes as he keeps his own on his plate.

“Sheriff,” he says by way of goodbye, walking off to hand in his dirty bowl at the bar. He can’t quite decide if the little mocking edge he hears in it is only in his imagination.

The next day, he heads into the mercantile’s for stuff to fix a busted seam on his saddle and there he is, yet again. And of course, what Pagan wants to buy just happens to be right beside the rack of thread in the narrow aisle. Ostensibly on the hunt for shaving supplies, but that asshole crowds so far into his personal space that he can _smell_ him, clean wool and cedar as he reaches past him to pick out a cake of soap from the bin and…is he wearing cologne? Something fine and spicy and expensive, Jesus. It doesn’t exactly belong with the other store scents of old leather and cured meat and brine pickles.

His face must’ve shown what he thinks of this ridiculousness, because Pagan finally backs out of the aisle with that same little sarcastic bow and leaves him be.

Mission finally accomplished, he walks out the door with his paper-wrapped bundle under his arm only to find Pagan still lounging right outside. Just leaning carelessly against the siding.

He idly sucks on a stick of striped candy like he was just waiting for Ajay to come wandering along, cheeks all pink from the chill in the air. As pink as the candy that he has his equally pink lips just so innocently wrapped around. Even his fucking waistcoat is pink today, pink silk embroidered with little Chinese dragons. The muted gold thread gleams in the wan winter sun.

Despite the fact that he isn’t being one bit suggestive about it, he still feels the blood creeping into his cheeks and ears anyway, and not just from the cold. Dark eyes watch him from under the brim of his hat, a spark of mirth in them.

Whether it’s mean-spirited or not he couldn’t say.

This little game’s growing old and he’s getting to where he’s mighty sick of it. Sick enough of it to break his silence.

“What do you fuckin’ _want,_ Min?”

“Why, nothing at all! I was just taking the morning air, enjoying my candy,” Pagan says, with a wounded air. He reaches out and gives his chest a little apologetic pat. Almost a…a caress, making his ears burn the harder, but in the next moment he wonders if maybe he imagined it. Just as he begins to recoil, Pagan’s quick fingers slip another stick of candy into his top shirt pocket, this one green.

“Sheriff,” and with a wink he moseys away, whistling a little around the candy still in his mouth.

Ajay reaches into his shirt pocket to retrieve his and stares down at it, confused and on the back foot. A feeling that he’s beginning to squarely associate with all things Pagan Min.

The whole business is beginning to have the flavor of mockery about it. And just how in the hell did that old reprobate know that the green ones are his favorite?

Thankfully, Pagan seems to think he’s been punished enough by his sardonic presence and makes himself scarce for a few blessed days. Or, more likely, he’s just grown bored of the game, of his failure to react.

Later that same day, still boxing up papers, he unearths an entire stack of receipts for Min’s citations in the storeroom. There’s nearly enough to fill their own box. A few drunk and disorderlies. Disturbing the peace, most of them, as he idly flips through the sheets. A few nights spent happily sleeping it off in one of his cells, duly recorded. Another from the time that bastard horse of his kicked a drunk miner clear across the fucking street and he made him cover the man’s doctor bill, Pagan laughing fit to bust.

One from last May catches his eye, and he almost grins at the memory.

The day he served it was yet another incident of disturbing the peace, with Paul shoving him out the saloon doors with a grimace. Though, to be fair, Pagan’s not always the instigator of the chaos that often seems to erupt around him. Sometimes his mere presence is enough to get those shitbags riled up. They take one look at the shape of his eyes and his expensive clothes and they see red, no matter how easygoing and charming he is. Let alone when they catch him counting cards and cheating them out of their hard-earned money for the sheer audacious fun of it, and before you know it the insults fly and they’re trying to punch that easy grin right off his smug face. Often in groups.

The other problem is, they also look at him and see a man that they think is an easy target to bully; soft, rich, and probably a sodomite to boot with his oh-so-fancy ways, an uppity educated coolie that needs taken down a few pegs. Needs to be taught his _place._ He’s heard plenty of the shit that ignorant rednecks spout off. But what they get are Min’s huge fists applied to their faces like the devil’s own sledgehammer. Followed up by a few degrading kicks from those fancy English riding boots of his if his fists don’t do the job, and then by that time Paul has to come around the bar and toss him out before the chairs start flying and somebody tries to shoot him.

He had gone ahead and wrote the citation up right then and delivered it in person as Pagan was dusting himself off, to save the county the cost of the stamp. Say what you will about him, but Pagan always pays them in a timely fashion, and he had accepted the ticket with good grace.

Ajay had squinted up at the sun and noted that it wasn’t even two o’clock yet.

“Did y’know,” he said, as he handed it over, “you’ve paid out enough in fines by now to get a new roof put on the schoolhouse? Workmen finished it up last week.”

“Is that so?” Min replied cheerfully, tucking the paper inside his jacket. “Why don’t we go and take a look? I want to see this…product of my patronage, as it were.”

He had shrugged. Why not? It wasn’t far and the day was quiet, now that Paul had shoved him unceremoniously out of the town watering hole. Together, they had walked down the dusty street in the easy companionable way they always had, despite their differences. He always did have a little bit of a soft spot for that swindling pirate.

The day had been warm and fine, and as they walked Pagan had rolled his sleeves up, his jacket slung carelessly over one shoulder. He remembered the way his own badge had winked brightly in the sun where it was pinned to the front of his rough leather vest, even brighter than the gold in Pagan’s ear.

When they got to the little schoolhouse, they stood there for awhile and admired the fresh wood and new tin and listened to the sleepy drone of the youngsters repeating their lessons. Just enjoying the weather. Finally, Pagan had turned to him with a grin.

“Ah, it’s a fine thing to be able to give back to one’s community, don’t you agree?” There had been a touch of good-natured laughter in his voice, not above poking a little fun at himself on that fine spring day. He dug out his money clip and extracted a ten and passed it and the citation back to him, even though the fine was only for five. “I believe it could use a new coat of paint as well,” and clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder, a twinkle in his eye.

So different than their current circumstances, such a sharp contrast to the brittle tension between them now. He has no idea how to get back to where they were. To that friendliness, to that warmth, as he shoves the paper back in the box in agitation.

Sometimes, real late when he can’t sleep, he wishes he had that snowy night back. To be able to do it over again. To never have stepped off that fucking porch in the first place, for one thing.

But barring that, to have made a different choice.

The idea that Pagan’s antics might be because he’s also equal parts fascinated and frustrated by him and unsure of what to do about either one never occurs to him at all.

***


	5. Deep Down

***

The saloon’s hopping tonight, full of bored cattlemen and farmers and miners with their last paychecks rattling in their pockets and nothing but midwinter time on their hands. Ready to ring in the new year by getting as shitfaced as possible. The muffled thumping of bawdy piano tunes drifts through the connecting wall, along with laughter and the occasional feminine squeal.

It promises to be rowdy enough that Ajay decides to stay over at the office, just in case. Not even half-past six and already dark as a cave out there, as Hurk bundles up and takes one of the lanterns down off the neat row of them on the wall to light his way home. He keeps his own lantern lit but lets the fire go ahead and die down for the night. With his hat on and his coat collar turned up he’s warm enough.

After a while he walks next door and into the raucous atmosphere of tobacco smoke and spilled beer fumes himself, both so that the patrons can see that he’s around and keeping an eye on things and to pick up his own mug of beer and a plate of supper to take back to his office. He leans against the bar after he puts in his order with one of Paul’s boys, the loud cheers and groans from the poker tables drawing his idle attention as he waits on his food. A flash of black and gold and snowy white among the dull browns and faded denim blues catches the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t turn his head to look.

He knew he’d be here.

He collects his mug and his plate and turns to go, the weight of Min’s eyes on his back all the way out the door.

Say what you will about Paul, but at least he knows how to hire fellows that can _cook,_ as he settles in at the desk with his stew. The meat is a mystery…bear maybe? But it’s spiced so well that he wouldn’t give a shit if it was prairie dog. Tempting to just lick the bowl clean after it’s gone, but he sets it aside to take back next door later. He listens carefully for any indicator of bedlam breaking out over there, but things seem calm enough at the moment. After he polishes off the last of his beer with a contented sigh, Ajay props his booted feet up on his desk and pulls his hat down low and settles in to take himself a little nap.

He dreams of a white silence, the profound peace of a snowy forest.

And in this dream he curls up warmly in a snug den, his thick gray fur a buffer against the chill. Another furry body presses closely against his, curves around him and he relaxes into it. Outside it’s frigid, but in here the small space reflects their body heat back at them.

Safe, safe and warm. A cold nose snuffles into his ear and he nuzzles back with a happy sigh.

At some point the dream changes, and instead of fur a strong human arm wraps around him from behind, his companion still a warm, solid presence against him. He smiles and rolls over, brushes dark hair out of intense dark eyes. He twines his own arms around his neck and nuzzles into him as hands run softly up and down his sides. The feel of satiny bare skin against his own has him rubbing himself against him to get _more_ of it, so warm and good. More of the heat they generate between them. He arches up into his touch, so eager for it when a big, freckled hand finally slides down his belly, down…

The jangling bell jerks him away from that dream as he nearly tips the chair over backwards. Shocked and breathing hard and startled as all hell when he glances down at the bulge in his jeans, straining savagely against the buttons of his fly.

Early on in his tenure, he’d had that bell installed in his office with a line run through the connecting wall, over to a pull behind the bar. It keeps ringing with a shrill brassy clang, Paul’s signal that he’s got trouble over there that he’s not sure he can handle with the short oak club he keeps under the counter. Enough trouble that it’s gone quiet under the ringing, always a bad sign. He rubs his face with a full-body shiver and shakes his head as he shoves himself to his feet, still disoriented, still hard. Walks awkwardly over to the connecting wall and bangs his fist against it twice, the signal that he’s on his way over.

Ajay shoves the batwing doors open just in time to see the two combatants squaring off, and his stomach both sinks and flares in anger when he sees who it is. That poncy prick asshole, of course it is, his lip already bloodied. Presumably by the big son of a bitch in dirty overalls that’s currently circling him with his eye swelling shut. A hulking farmhand or maybe a miner, bullnecked and only a little taller but far wider and way younger.

Flushed with Paul’s cheap whiskey, he pulls a knife on Pagan like an absolute fool and in a blur of motion Ajay _draws,_ his heart slamming up into his throat hard enough to choke him.

The gun is in his hand and his thumb clicks the hammer back on the big Colt revolver before he can even process what he’s doing, before he can suck in a breath to shout a warning, a threat. Onlookers catch sight of it and scramble to get the hell out of his way, and the very next moment is when dawning horror sets in. Ready to shoot a man because of a fuckin’ bar brawl, knife or no knife? Over that scoundrel _Pagan Min?_ He lets the hammer down and slides it back into the holster with trembling fingers, but he has no time to process his reaction before Pagan closes with the guy.

Another utter fool. But Pagan feints as if _he_ has a blade as well, and the idiot’s nerves twitch to it, falling for that old trick. The thick arm shoots out with a wink of steel…but Pagan’s far too fast for him, he sees now, was never going to be there on the receiving end of it. As he slides inside his guard, he seizes a good handful of the kid’s sunbleached curls and before Ajay can blink, bounces his head off a table with a sound reminiscent of somebody kicking a watermelon. He goes down into the sawdust as if poleaxed, and Pagan flings his head back and roars laughter.

“Won’t be insulting my _delightfully_ mixed heritage again anytime soon, now will you?” he bellows cheerfully. “Just look at what you did, you goddamned potato grubbing _fuck._ ” He swipes at the blood trickling into his goatee from his split lip and flicks it into the guy’s face, who is currently far beyond looking at anything. Leans over and spits into it too, just for good measure. The knife he boots away with another booming laugh, then strides over to another table and swipes a glass of whiskey right out from in front of some cattlepuncher and tosses it back in one go.

“ _Hey!_ Why, I oughta…”

Ajay decides that he should probably step in, both before the cowboy bites off more than he can chew and the farmhand’s three friends try to jump Pagan from behind. He can see them closing in, which promises to be utter mayhem.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough of that,” he bellows as well, seizing Pagan by the elbow. When faced with situations like this, he always finds it effective to shout orders as authoritatively as possible. Give folks shit to do.

“You three, pick up your boy there and carry him on down to the clinic and bang on the door ‘til the doc gets up. Paul, get this fellow another drink and put it on Min’s tab. And _you,_ ” he shakes Pagan a little, “you’re coming with me.”

“Yes, Sheriff Ghale,” Pagan says, and manages to sound nearly contrite. Nearly. That sharp laughter lingers under it as he leans heavily against him when he tries to get him steered through the batwing doors, like he’s drunk enough to not be steady. A sham he sees though immediately.

“I know you’re not half as soused as you’re pretending to be, so straighten the hell up,” he spits coldly, and Pagan tips his head back and laughs again like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever said. His eyes sparkle with mischief.

“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes! Not the good Sheriff Ghale, no sir!” And then with that mocking edge still in his voice: “Oh, the things that I have to do in order to get your _attention._ ”

Still laughing, laughing _at_ him…and this time it shoots through Ajay like a hot bolt of lightning.

Raw rage bubbles up in him as he plants his boots on the worn boards and wrenches Pagan’s arm up between his shoulder blades by the grip on his elbow. As he does it he spins him around and slams him face-first into the rough-cut plank siding of the saloon and in one smooth movement has the cuffs out of his back pocket, the cuffs he seldom uses and has never used on him before. He yanks the other arm back and gets them on him with a sharp click before Pagan has a chance to decide that he’s going to be a tough customer.

But he doesn’t fight back, doesn’t try to kick out at him or get away, much to his surprise. Doesn’t say a word or make a sound but for the pained grunt he let out at being driven into a wall.

“Oh don’t you worry, you got my _attention_ all right. I’m fucking sick of you being at the bottom of every bit of trouble in this town, Min,” he growls, as he jerks him hard and marches him up the boardwalk to the office. “Swaggering around and breaking whatever laws you goddamn well please. And I should’ve put a stop to it a long time ago. I’ve been soft on you, lord knows why, but it stops _now._ ” Pagan doesn’t say a word to that either. He expected yelling and cussing at this kind of treatment, but he goes with him quietly, his face held in rigid lines.

Their breath smokes in the cold when he gets the door unlocked and pushes him inside. Pagan stands there dispassionately as he turns the lamp back up and strips the gunbelt off of him and lays it on his desk. He pats him down for extra knives, sticks his finger down in the tops of his tall boots and runs his hands up his thighs, up his sides and under his jacket, over the fine silk embroidery of his waistcoat. He fully expects some biting and suggestive comment, like _aren’t you at least going to buy me a drink first,_ but he still says nothing.

Ajay avoids actually looking at his face.

Once he’s searched him to his satisfaction, he releases him just long enough to cuff his hands in front of him instead and Pagan heaves a sigh. No more complaint than that at having them put back on instead of removed altogether, but when Ajay takes his elbow to lead him to the cells, he automatically heads toward the relatively cushy drunk tank that he’s used to.

“No Min, over here,” he says, and leads him to the other, the one that’s bare stone but for a pile of straw, a bucket, and a big iron ring set in the floor. The _real_ cell, and he feels Pagan’s arm tighten up under his fingers, a thrumming tension. But still, he offers no resistance as Ajay pushes him to his knees and locks his cuffs to the loop of heavy logging chain attached to the ring, just enough slack in it to lie down.

Second thoughts already nag at him as he walks out and locks the cell door, but he’s come too far to back down now, not without severely undermining his own authority. Merely a lesson in fucking respect that Min’s had coming for a while now, he tells himself sternly, as that anger still simmers in him.

It’s still uncomfortable to sit there at his desk and write up the arrest report with Pagan’s fierce eyes burning holes into him through the bars. He can feel the weight of them from clear across the room, but he forces himself to sit there easily and finish his paperwork. Goes over a few other things in his to-do box as well, just for good measure, never looking up.

If he had, he might have spotted the fury in the line of his shoulders, but also the pain under that burning stare.

After a couple of hours it sounds like Paul’s patrons have mostly cleared out or headed upstairs for the night, so he files things away neatly, puts on his hat and gloves and blows the lamp out and locks the door behind him, leaving Pagan to the dark and cold. He makes the short walk across the street to his own little house, the moon sparkling on the snow like strewn diamonds and squeaking under his boots, the air icy.

Once he gets inside, he punches up the fire and gets undressed and proceeds to lie there in bed for hours with his hands under his head until the moon sets, until that silvery light ceases to flood his bedroom window.

_All he’s done is be his usual ornery self, teasing you a little to see what you’d do. Finishing the fights that those jackasses pick with him. He’s never drawn on any of those morons or even waved a knife around, that fool came at him with one but he didn’t pull his own._

_Left alone, he doesn’t cause trouble for Paul but sing loud and off-key when he’s had a few too many. Treats Noore’s girls like they’re actual ladies, kisses the backs of their hands and such. No trouble there either. They’re all sweet on him, but he’s such a gentleman about turning them down that they’ve about quit trying to get him upstairs._

_All he did out there in that blizzard was risk his life to save yours and touch your leg when you weren’t expecting it. That and offer himself up to your perverted curiosity. The rest of it was all you. What was it that you were so goddamn afraid of? Not like he was gonna try to hurt you or something. Kind of the opposite._

_No, it was you that’s done the hurting._

_You’re pissed at yourself and taking it out on him, is what you’re doing, and now you’ve gone and gotten yourself to where you can’t back up, a real bad place to be._

These thoughts run through his head over and over and _over_ again, until the first seam of light brightens the eastern horizon. Might as well get his sorry ass up and start this shameful day, as he slowly washes up with water from the kettle and gets dressed.

Hurk’s already made it into work when he walks in, the potbelly stove blazing merrily in the corner and the coffee already on. He glances at Pagan and notes that he’s still kneeling on the stones just as he left him. Like he hasn’t moved all night, his head bowed. The only difference is the jailhouse-issued wool blanket draped across his shoulders.

“Hey Boss,” Hurk calls out. “Lordamighty, it was colder than a welldigger’s ass in here when I come in.” Once he gets closer he drops his volume to just above a whisper, for his ears only. “So I don’t know what’s going on with Min there, but I unlocked the door and threw a blanket over him on account of he ain’t got a coat or a hat or nothin’. What did he _do?_ I almost uncuffed him so he could move around, but you had him locked down like he was _dangerous_ or somethin’ so I didn’t mess with him.”

Ajay recognizes that prickling sensation in his gut as serious remorse, a feeling he’s definitely not accustomed to. Hasn’t felt it in years, in fact.

“Mostly just the usual, but he got mouthy with me last night and I decided to teach him a little lesson.”

Hurk just stares at him, obviously discomfited. He’s seen Hurk happily bust heads and haul miscreants in here by a rope around their necks, but it’s clear that even he doubts the fairness of this.

“Listen, I’m gonna release him here in just a minute. Do me a favor and run over to Paul’s and see if you can’t find his coat and hat and get that cussed horse of his saddled up and brought over.”

“Sure Boss,” he says cheerfully enough, but his eyes are still troubled.

After Hurk walks out the door, that leaves him with nothing to do but go and let him out. When he unclips the big key ring from his pocket, he finds that feeling of remorse growing stronger as he unlocks the door and kneels on the cold stone beside him.

“Hey, how you doing,” but he doesn’t answer, or even bother to raise his head. He lays careful fingers on his arm and Pagan tenses up under it, and only then does he see the state his hands are in. Big purple welts ring both his elegant wrists, as if he might’ve panicked at some point and tried to jerk himself loose, the left one abraded and bloody from some burr or rough patch on the metal.

That shame suddenly prickles at the backs of his eyes now, burns thick in his throat. Himself thoroughly, _thoroughly_ in the wrong. One of Pagan’s cheekbones is bruised and scraped up too, and while he might’ve absolved himself of some of the blame for his wrists, that one is squarely on him. Roughed up from where he shoved his face into the splintery boards of the saloon’s front. He didn’t even notice it last night.

_No, too busy being a coward and a bully to look him in the face._

When he pictures himself in his head he’s always considered himself to be a just man, tough but fair with folks. One of the _good_ ones, in a world filled with a whole lot of bad.

Never really had to consider the opposite. Or just what he might really be made of, deep down.

Unconsciously he reaches out to do…something, he doesn’t even know what, but Pagan flinches away from him with a rattle of the heavy chain. Twists sharply against the cuffs trapping him, his head snapping up and eyes blazing.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” he rasps, as blood trickles down his fingers.

An echo of that night out in the snow: _You can touch me. It’s all right, I want you to,_ whispered against his ear, Pagan’s body warm and solid against his, and that memory makes him want to hit something. Or maybe just cry.

“Easy,” he murmurs instead of doing either, “easy, I’m gonna let you loose now.” As carefully as he’s ever done anything he unlocks the cuffs and eases the metal away from his skin. Both are icy cold against his fingers. “Let me go get a bandage and some ointment for…”

“No.”

Pagan gingerly shifts on his knees and plants his hands to push himself to his feet and Ajay backs out of the cell to give him space, and when he stands up he can hear his knees crack and pop from halfway across the room. He winces and collects the medicine chest anyway and sets it on his desk as Pagan throws the blanket onto the straw behind him and straightens his jacket, settling the cloth neatly across his shoulders and dusting himself off. Gathering his dignity around himself.

“I said _no,”_ when Ajay approaches with the bandage, a hard snarl.

“All right,” he says calmly, keeping things easy, but inwardly dismayed to not even be allowed that small measure of atonement.

Hurk’s back within ten minutes with Pagan’s stuff, saving him from further contemplation of his boot toes and Pagan’s rigid back as he warms himself in front of the stove. He watches him rubbing the circulation back into his hands and suddenly, sharply wishes that he could take his hands in his and hold them, tuck them carefully under his own shirt to warm them. Him imagining what those hands would feel like spread out across the tender skin of his belly makes him shiver as he stands there with his mind whirling. Stands there and tries to figure out where all of last night’s anger came from and why it’s gone now and how all of this went so fucking tits up.

As Pagan takes the offered coat and hat and stiffly puts both on, Hurk reaches past him for the coffee pot.

“Min, you want a cup ‘fore you head out?”

“Fuck off, Drubman,” he says, dull and cold and tired, the vitriol gone.

“Suit y’self,” Hurk says pleasantly, as he sits down and promptly tips the chair back on two legs and blows on the mug in his hands.

Pagan turns his head his way but doesn’t look at him, his eyes obscured by his hat brim.

“My gun?”

Ajay glances at his gunbelt hanging on the peg above his desk chair and thinks that over, the way his eyes had blazed with hot rage, like a trapped animal. Although this exhausted dullness worries him more, if he’s being honest with himself.

“I don’t much care for your mood just at the moment. Come by later and I’ll give it back to you, once you’ve settled down a little.”

Pagan’s face hardens even further at that, but he shrugs like it doesn’t matter, a hitch of his broad shoulders with his hands in his pockets. Like he doesn’t give two shits either way.

“Am I free to go?”

“Yeah, you’re…you’re free to go. Hurk’s already got your horse at the post.”

Pagan glances over in Hurk’s direction. “Deputy, thank you for the blanket.”

Hurk makes a little ‘it was no problem’ gesture at him with his upraised cup.

Ajay walks with him out onto the front porch, even though he gets the idea that he’d rather spit on him than look at him at the moment. Wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Wouldn’t really blame him either.

Surprisingly, Pagan’s the one to break the silence.

“Well, it’s a fine thing to not have to pretend anymore, to show your true colors, don’t you think? A relief for you, perhaps. Though I really should learn to temper my expectations.” He pushes his black Stetson further back on his head with a thumb and gazes out onto the shades of pink and rosy gold dawn touching the snow. Only then does he turn and look Ajay in the eye. “But I did have the idea that you might be different.”

And with that he steps off the porch and sets foot in Beauregard’s stirrup and swings up, clucks at the horse and makes a neat turn to head down Main Street. Dark horse, dark rider, his back held ramrod-straight and proud as he slowly rides out of town, leaving the weight of his words behind him.

Ajay stands there for a long time in the cold and watches him go, until he’s a tiny dark blot against the mud-tinged white of the road. Watches for a long time after that too, lost in thought.

Pagan doesn’t come back. Not that day, nor the one after that.

On the fourth day, he takes Pagan’s gunbelt down from its peg and lays it out on his desk and runs his hand along the black leather, worn to softness and the shape of his waist from long wearing. He slides his engraved revolver out of the holster and unloads it, lining the bullets up on his desk before he tries the grip experimentally. Ivory, and carved to fit Pagan’s hand, he’d wager. It doesn’t quite feel right in his. The knife is the same way, a matched set with the gun, the same intricate scrollwork down the blade and the same carved ivory handle. Lord only knows how expensive, as he gets out the cleaning kit for lack of anything else to do. Not that it needs cleaning; it’s obviously well-cared for, but it keeps his hands busy, gives him something to do besides stare out the frosty window and listen for the thump of Pagan’s boots on the porch.

He stretches it out, takes his time at it, but there’s only so many parts to oil and then wipe down. After he reloads it and slides it back in the holster, he pulls the knife and hones it to a glittering razor’s edge. Not that it needed it either, but now he could shave with it.

Something about that makes him recall his hard, lean face, the rasp of stubble against his own scruffy cheek. The touch of Pagan’s warm lips just at the corner of his mouth, the mingled scents of good whiskey and evergreen and snow.

As a distraction, he gets up and walks over to the stove where Hurk’s tilted back in a chair and whittling on a block of wood. A shelf along the wall holds his other carvings, all little animals. The one he’s currently working at looks like it might turn out to be a badger. He pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot and stands there blowing on it while he looks back at his desk, at Pagan’s stuff, now neatly rolled up in the soft leather belt. Not realizing that Hurk’s hands have stilled as he follows his gaze.

“I figure you oughta go on out there,” Hurk says, breaking the long silence.

“Yeah.” He takes a slow, measured sip from the tin mug in his hand. “I reckon I should.”

***


	6. A Door Left Open

***

The ride out to Pagan’s ranch gives Ajay plenty of time to think, as snow gently sifts down from a steely gray sky.

He might be almost thirty and have worn his badge for more than a year now, but all this business with Min seems to shine an unfortunate light on several of his personal failings. Like how deep down in his heart he’s apparently still that stupid kid that couldn’t stay still, who would only stick around when things looked safe.

No, that’s not it either. As long as they stayed fucking _easy._ At the first hint of human complication he’d be out, moving on down the trail, leaving the tangles behind him.

Funny how he’d rather face down a whole gang of cattle thieves or a shootout than people trying to get close to him.

He didn’t say anything to Pagan about it on that night of confessions by the fire, but he ran out on his mother before she got sick. They’d argued and he’d left for months and months, just took off on her. And although he made it back before she died, she was real sick by that time. _Real_ sick, but she’d been overjoyed to see his sorry ass. The last conversation they had was all about Kyrat, her sharing her memories with him of that beautiful place at the top of the world.

Almost a decade and he still feels guilty for that. But that remorse wasn’t enough to stop him from breaking his pattern, because he ran out on her, too. The girl in El Paso that had loved him.

She was an apprentice to a seamstress in town and he was down there in between jobs years ago and they had hit it off at a barn dance. Just two young people together and at first it had been so easy to talk to her, to be with her. Warm nights out under the stars and even warmer nights in bed with her and in time, he might have come to love her too. But they weren’t even together two weeks before she said those words, and then started hinting about marriage, and babies. In a way, he had understood. That’s just how it is out here. Life’s short, and dangerous, and you have to make the most of the time you get, and she had wanted to make the most of it with him.

But the idea of it had spooked him badly enough to leave her behind too.

Hardly responsible, or stable, or even real sane. Just drifting along, years and years gone by in a blur until he was too tired to run anymore. He’d seen those huge mountains on the horizon, the line of the snow-covered Rockies and it made him think about how he’d been born in a place like that. Of his mother’s memories.

Maybe these mountains had whispered in his own ear, had whispered, _home._ And now he has duties, and responsibilities to the people here…and something that he has to try to fix.

 _Not fair, not fucking fair, what you did to him. Mad at yourself and taking it out on him,_ a refrain in his head to the slow muffled rhythm of Daisy’s hooves. He keeps his eyes focused on the patch of snowy road right between her ears, because if he looks back he might just tuck his tail and skitter back to town. _Not fair, what you did. Have to make things right. As right as I can get them._

Not sure in the slightest how amenable Pagan’s gonna be to that. But he’s sick of running. The only thing he knows is that he doesn’t want to do it anymore.

Somebody years ago named the place Cedarwood Ranch, on account of the big cedar trees that ring the ranch house’s yard like dark shaggy guardians. As he rides up to the barn, he’s a little surprised at how decrepit the place looks. The inner pasture fences look near to falling down while the brush does its best to take back the fields. Although the house itself is neat as a pin, warm and inviting light shining through the windows onto the snow.

The barn is neatly kept too, the stout wooden door opening easily under his hand on well-oiled hinges. He leads Daisy inside to the stall next to Beauregard’s, who gives him the side-eye and then ignores him like he’s of no account at all. But being ignored sure beats him trying to bite.

“Do you stay so cussed mad ‘cause he went and gave you a stupid name?”

The big bay snorts at him and goes back to his oats, utterly unimpressed. An improvement in their relationship he supposes, as he gets his own horse unsaddled and rubs her down with a twist of straw. His stomach roils with nerves as he works. No idea how long he’ll be here, but he fetches her some hay and makes sure the water buckets are full for both horses.

After he does that, there’s nothing left but to walk on up to the house, Pagan’s gear still tucked safely inside his shearling coat.

It looks like a gingerbread house under its coating of snow, he muses, pretty as a picture. He knocks the snow off his boots and taps quietly on the door. He knows that Pagan lives alone out here, and when he doesn’t show he moves over to the window and rubs the frost off with his sleeve in order to peer inside.

The inside’s real nice as well, not that he thought it wouldn’t be. A little surprised that it’s all one room, like a cabin, and more comfortable than ostentatious. Expensive looking furniture, but in the well-made kind of way, not the spindly parlor stuff you’re not supposed to sit on that he half expected. Warm wood paneling and a big stone fireplace with a cozy fire crackling away, big soft-looking bed in the corner, a drafting table that’s also in service as a desk. Maps and charts tacked up here and there on the walls. Shiny new Winchester repeater hanging over the mantel.

But no Min in sight.

As he peers further, he spots another door on the other side of the room. Probably the back porch door or a mud room or something. He backs away from the window and walks down one side of the wraparound porch in search of that other door, around the woodpile stacked dry and neat against the side of the house. He rounds the corner of that wall to the back…and stops dead.

The bore of the shotgun in his face is immense in the gray winter light, so large it looks like a goddamn cannon.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he might have yelled, but instead it comes out strangled and airless.

He tears his eyes away from that maw to look past it, right into the cold, fierce eye sighting down the barrel.

This is it. This is the end. Pagan’s going to fire, going to blow him right in half with that thing, and faced with his own impending death he doesn’t lunge for the gun or fling himself off the side of the porch into the bushes or anything that would make a lick of sense. No, like an absolute fucking coward he finds himself…simply closing his eyes and waiting for it.

Some faraway part of him asks the rational part if he’s being a fool because maybe he thinks he deserves what he gets. At least a little.

The clicking sound of Pagan’s thumb letting the hammer down makes them fly open again with an embarrassing little gasp that he really wishes he could suck back in. Pagan’s flinty gaze softens just a little when he makes that sound, and he lays the gun aside altogether. Steam from the hot water in the tin bathtub he’s currently sitting in curls gently around his bare torso as they watch each other.

“As you can no doubt see for yourself, I was hardly expecting a visitor,” he says, tipping his hat further back on his head and gesturing at himself with a sardonic wave of his hand.

 _Sorry to bother you_ is what he means to say, but it seems as if he’s lost his voice altogether. When he just stands there awkwardly, Pagan relaxes back in the tub like he doesn’t have a care in the world and smiles that same cool, mocking smile.

“So! Come to hang me finally, Sheriff?”

If he had said _Would you care for a cup of tea_ the tone would have been the same.

Troubling that Pagan would even think it of him, that he’d ever use his slightly tipsy confession from that night against him. Brow furrowed, he reaches into his coat for his stuff to hand it over, to make it clear why he’s come around. But despite his easy demeanor Pagan’s eyes flash with apprehension as soon as he moves. With fear. _Afraid_ of him, and it hits him like a punch to the gut.

As soon as he sees that spark of distress in Pagan’s eyes he’s suddenly struck by the dizzying scope of his own authority. The life and death power that he holds over the lives of everyone in Elk River. It never really occurred to him before, the sheer depth of it. He really could bring Pagan in and string him up in the town square...and no one would bat an eyelash. He could say, ‘This is a wanted man,’ and while that’s certainly true, it’s not the whole story. But folk that Pagan has known for years and years would turn on him in the blink of an eye, would help erect the gallows themselves and nod at the rightness of justice done.

Min must deserve it. He must be one of the bad ones, because Sheriff Ghale said so. And out here, his word is law.

Fear doesn’t belong in that man’s eyes. Not for anyone or anything. The absolute last person that he wants seeing him that way; he realizes that too. That night in the jail, that night out in the snow, it all slams into him and he suddenly finds himself unable to bear it. He drops Pagan’s gunbelt and revolver onto the porch and rips his coat off and Pagan’s fingers twitch like he’d really like to have that shotgun back in his hands right about now.

Ajay closes the distance between them in three long strides, heedless of that gun or Pagan’s currently naked state or the way his eyes widen with alarm. Drops to his knees right there on the wet boards and gathers him up in his arms.

Pagan goes rigid under his hands. But when he doesn’t strike at him or even shove him away, he pushes his hot face into the chilled skin of his throat, knocking both their hats off. His manages to land in the bathwater, but neither of them pay any attention to it.

“I’m…Pagan, I’m so _sorry,_ ” he manages to grit out. “I’ve been a fucking prick.”

At that, the clenched muscle against his cheek and under his hands eases, just a little.

“Yes, yes, you have,” and his voice is so much softer and gentler than he deserves as damp fingers touch the back of his head.

“Can you forgive me,” he whispers, but rather than giving him a chance to answer, he squeezes his eyes shut and drags his lips across his cheek and finds his mouth with his.

It’s Pagan’s turn to make some shocked and airless gasp against his lips, which admittedly might be a little funny. If he were kissing him back at all, that is.

But he’s not. He doesn’t.

When Ajay pulls back to look into his face, that mocking humor is long gone, replaced by something raw and wary in his eyes. Like he doesn’t trust this to not be some kind of a trap, waiting for Ajay to turn on him yet again. His fingers tremble against his hair.

Ajay runs his hand slowly down his other arm, down to his wrist. His sleeve soaks up the water like a wick but he ignores that too, in favor of gently brushing his fingers over the bruises that are just starting to yellow out some, over the scabbed-up scrapes. He lifts Pagan’s dripping hand to his mouth and kisses those marks as softly as he possibly can.

Pagan’s sharp inhale doesn’t have a thing to do with pain.

A wordless apology, a plea for forgiveness as Ajay reaches up for his other hand to kiss that wrist too. Takes his face in his hands and ghosts his lips across the scrapes and bruises also discoloring his cheek. Pagan’s breath warms his throat, brushing along his jaw.

“This is what I should’ve done that night, out in the snow,” he whispers to his guarded confusion, and touches his lips with his own again.

And this time, Pagan’s mouth opens like warm, wet velvet under his.

The first touch of his tongue against his jolts and flutters through him, so strongly that it might have made him a little unsteady if he weren’t already on his knees. Pagan’s wet hands come up to cup his face too and he suddenly can’t seem to get enough of him. The feel of him under his hands, the taste of him, but they eventually have to separate a little. Pagan’s heart thuds under his palm like something trying to break free.

“Good god…you’re _serious,_ aren’t you,” Pagan murmurs hoarsely, and he nods.

He looks at him with some expression he can’t name…and then slowly stands up and steps out of the tub. Hot water sheets down his body, steaming gently in the cold.

Like they’re not quite under his conscious control, he gets up too, his fingers running down his vest and then his shirt, undoing buttons as he goes. He toes his old rundown boots off and peels out of his frigid wet shirt and denims and all the rest, sheds his clothes all over the boards of Pagan’s porch until he’s as naked as he is.

They gaze at each other for a long time as the snow falls softly beyond the porch’s edge. Like a slow-moving dream as the flakes drift across dark cedars.

All hard and scarred up, the marks of a rough life. Been shot a time or two. Been cut up a few more than that. But even so, there’s still something about him that’s almost like a kind of beautiful, as he watches Pagan reach for a towel, something strong and sure that draws him in. Wanting to touch him like that night, velvety-hot in his hand, but also to see what he’d feel like pressed up against his own skin. Kissing him while running his hands all over him. That dream of the warm den flashes through his mind, makes him shiver with something besides the cold as he reaches out.

The skin over his hip is surprisingly soft, like satin laid over muscle when he runs his fingers over it delicately. He slides his hand up his chest and Pagan doesn’t flinch from that. When Pagan raises his own hand and lays it right over his heart, he doesn’t flinch away from him either. Only warm where they’re touching.

Pagan swallows in the snowy silence. Ajay notes that his heart is still thudding away in his chest, fast and hard under his hand.

“Won’t you come inside with me?” His voice like raw silk being dragged across his skin, heating him down deep.

“Yeah,” and finds that his own voice doesn’t want to work quite right.

While Pagan finishes drying off, he bends and awkwardly gathers up his clothes and his damp shirt and his sopping hat, which he holds out and whips back and forth over the edge of the porch to get some of the extra water out of it.

When he turns back, Pagan’s gone. But the door stands open for him.

Now that Pagan’s taken his distracting self out of his field of view, a little cold logic returns to cut through the heated fuzz in his brain. He could get dressed and shut that door between them, get his coat on and ride on back home like the sensible, rational man that he’s always pictured himself as. He’s made his apologies, delivered his stuff, and now he can leave and forget all about this…whatever this is. Pure craziness. Outright lunacy. Something born of nothing more than an aborted handjob in a winter storm, a few kisses, and a dream. Nothing that means jack shit.

Except, it does. It absolutely does.

He stands there with his clothes in his arms, shivering a little and looks back at that door, at the warm light spilling out. If he walks over and closes it, he has the idea that it’ll never open to him again.

After thinking on that for a little while, Ajay does reach out and close it. Behind him, after he walks through, so as to not let all the heat out.

***


	7. Warm Inside

***

The warmth of the room hits Ajay like a wave after being outside for so long, and with it also comes a wave of nervousness that has his teeth chattering far more than being cold. He clenches his jaw against it and heads for the fireplace, where Pagan has a wooden rack set out for his towel. He keeps his mind focused only on that, on getting his own wet shirt and hat spread out on it. They drip gently onto the flagstones.

When he turns and looks up, he finds that Pagan is already lying in bed, waiting for him. Just watching.

When their eyes meet, he holds the blankets up for him in a silent invitation.

That short distance between them feels as if it takes an eternity to cover, also like a dream but for the hard knot in his belly, the floorboards silky under his bare feet and the smell of cedar strong and sharp and good in his nose. The entire house is made out of it, he realizes, as he slides into the bed with him. Soft, soft sheets sliding against his bare skin.

“Much better than a lean-to in the woods, I should think,” Pagan murmurs from the other pillow, and when Ajay carefully takes his hands in his and places them on the tender skin of his belly, he finds his own nervousness inexplicably falling away.

Pagan locks eyes with him, dark and intense. Ajay strokes his own hands over him lightly, wanting to prove to him that they can be gentle, can be affectionate, can give pleasure. Eager to make him forget all about how the last time his hands were on him was filled with pain, with his hard hands leaving him chained in the freezing dark. He buries his face in Pagan’s shoulder and kisses the freckled curve of it where it meets his neck.

_Forgive me._

Ajay gusts a sigh in relief when Pagan responds to him in kind, running his hands over him with the same gentle eagerness.

In some ways being with him is not all that different than what he’s used to; warm hands, warm skin and heated breaths brushing against his face. But the decidedly deeper timbre of the little pleasured noises Pagan makes near his ear and the way that he can’t seem to help grinding himself against his hip a little, or the confident way his hands roam over him and then down to squeeze his ass is _way_ fucking different.

But good. Real good, warming him on the inside as well.

“I dreamed about you,” he whispers. “Dreamed that we were warm and naked together, just like this,” and Pagan blinks at that. And then grins, a slow, cocky little grin.

“Tell me about it, this dream of yours. What else happened?”

“You licked my ear, for starters.”

Pagan laughs, low and rich, a sound he wants to go on hearing. He leans over and noses at him, his whiskers tickling his cheek.

“Like this?” So quiet, the merest breath stirring against his hair. And then the wet heat of his tongue traces the shell of his ear. The unexpected and shivery pleasure of it makes him suck in a breath. Not much like his actual dream but he’s not about to say so, especially when Pagan’s tongue swirls a little circuit and then delves _in._

“Yeah, like…like that,” he manages to get out, already hard too.

“And then what happened?”

Ajay slides his hands up his chest and wraps his arms around his neck and sighs at the feeling of satiny skin rubbing against his, nuzzling at him and wriggling to get closer. Pagan’s eyes widen a little when they slide together with just a little teasing friction.

“You ran your hands up my sides…yeah, just like that,” with a low hiss of pleasure as Pagan’s fingertips rake gently along his sensitive ribs. “You…you slid one down…”

“And then?” Pagan whispers, so softly. Not cocky now, just flushed and bright eyed with that sweet expression on his face, his fingers spread low across his belly. He can feel them trembling a little.

It’s his turn to laugh. “And then I don’t know _what_ the hell happened, because you chose that very moment to wallop that fucking farmer and Paul yanking that bell scared me shitless. I about fell out of my goddamn chair…”

Pagan’s eyebrows raise in surprise as he barks a laugh of his own. “What?! Do you mean to tell me that you were over there dreaming about me while I was wasting my time right next door, playing five-card stud with a bunch of filthy, louse-ridden miners?” He manages to look amused and crestfallen at the same time.

“I should’ve never taken you over to the jail…if I had any sense at all I would’ve taken you across the street to my house, taken you to bed…” Pagan shivers against him at that, but he shakes his head, suddenly serious. “No, I should’ve never been such a fuckin’ coward…”

“Ajay…”

“Nothing’s been right, since that night out in the snow. _Nothing._ Except this right here, right now.”

Ajay holds him close and presses his forehead to his and repeats what Pagan said that night.

“You can touch me,” he whispers. “It’s all right, I want you to.” And Pagan lets out a little shuddering sigh against his mouth and reaches between them.

That first soft stroke of his warm hand has him clutching him about the neck, the hot pleasure of it tingling all through his nerves. The second, firmer one has him groaning.

“God,” he chokes out, and Pagan grins happily with a flash of gold. After a few more lazy strokes, Pagan slides his hand lower and runs a thumb over his balls, and then even lower. Just exploring, although it makes his stomach tense up a little, his muscles tighten up.

It also makes him think of that other, seemingly endless night and all those thoughts running through his head: _What was it that you were so goddamn afraid of? Not like he was gonna try to hurt you or something. Kind of the opposite._

Done with cowardice, with fear, just sick of it. Done with dancing around what he really wants, as he bites the inside of his cheek…and opens his legs for him.

When he does, Pagan slides his hand slowly between his thighs, _under_ him. Brushes his fingers against the entrance to his body in a tiny, fluttering caress. Even though he could guess what he was aiming for, it still feels strange and vulnerable as all _hell,_ but no fucking way he’s going to back down.

“Has anybody ever touched you here before?” Pagan murmurs low and hot in his ear, and he tightens his arms around his shoulders and shakes his head. “Shall I show you how good it can feel?”

“Yeah, I…yeah, show me. Show me.” His own voice comes out as a breathy whisper too, as he shivers all over.

At that, Pagan bites his bottom lip sweetly, with a little boyish grin and his eyes shining. He finds himself grinning back as he pulls away just enough to reach over him and rummage around in the nightstand.

This time Pagan’s touch is firmer, now that his fingers are slick with oil. Sliding and circling and he can’t even begin to describe how it feels as he tries to shove that other, vulnerable feeling down and just relax into his hands. Pagan’s probably the biggest liar in the county but he believes him, about this feeling good somehow, figures some fellows wouldn’t be keen on it if it didn’t.

His other hand seems to be everywhere, running all over whatever he can reach. He slides it in between them and runs a thumb in languid circles around his nipple, circles that match what he’s doing down lower.

And all of a sudden it does feel good, _real_ good, like it crept up on him. Instinctively, he wraps his leg around him and groans at the increase in sensation as his balls roll gently against Pagan’s wrist, as his cock nudges wetly along the soft underside of his forearm. The pleasure of what Pagan’s doing almost seems to vibrate and tingle under his stroking fingers.

“Relax for me…that’s right, just like that.” Going so slowly and watching his face, Pagan slides one long finger into him, easing it in.

His sudden, sharp inhale has no more to do with pain than Pagan’s did outside.

“Now, doesn’t that feel nice?”

“…s’good, yeah…yeah, _more,_ ” he manages to gasp out, and Pagan grins in delight and obliges him by adding another.

He can’t seem to help the way his body moves of its own accord, rocking and thrusting himself onto Pagan’s fingers deep inside of him, nearly riding his hand. It also feels too good to care, when he seems to be made of nothing but nerve endings. Pressing up so his dripping cock gets friction against his arm and then back down onto his fingers, half-dazed with pleasure and marveling at the ease with which he just…opens for him, greedy for it.

Tantalizingly close to enough friction, but not quite. It doesn’t really matter though, content to rest his forehead against his and work himself almost drowsily onto him, against him. Warm, and close, and good.

But after a few minutes, Pagan breaks the quiet.

“Ajay?”

“Mmm?”

“Beautiful boy…let me show you something _else._ ”

While he's processing that little endearment, Pagan manages to surprise him all over again when he slides out of his arms to wriggle down the bed and without any warning, takes him in his mouth.

At the first touch of that wet heat Ajay drops his head back onto the mattress and wads his hands into the sheets, not quite trusting himself not to grab or shove up into it and choke him. It’s been a long time. _Long_ time, and never like this, good god, as he heaves for air. Pagan might be a little clumsy, like it’s been awhile for him too…but rapidly hitting his stride and doesn’t let him forget for a second where his fingers are still buried.

When he raises his head again to watch, the way that Pagan’s face has gone all soft with his eyes closed in the firelight and the blissful little noises that he makes has him kind of wanting to try it too, to see if it’s really as good as all that. Slowly, leisurely sucking him, taking his sweet time at it and probably trying to stretch it out but it’s not going to work. Not when it’s been so long since anybody’s put their hands on him that wasn’t trying to kill him, not when he’s already sweating and his whole body is vibrating around the places that Pagan touches.

 _Me inside him. Him inside me,_ he thinks, sort of delirious and then realizes just how close he is. Imminent. He shoves at Pagan’s shoulder but he completely ignores him in favor of just pinning him to the bed. Pins him flat with his big hand spread across his stomach, which was a good idea since he takes the opportunity to just swallow him down.

 _All_ the way down. As his throat works around him he crooks his fingers against…something inside of him, something that hits like a glowing hot wave that has his whole body vibrating and rips a sound out of him that he can’t even describe. He gasps for air and goes rigid and quivering under Pagan’s hands and around his fingers and comes so hard he actually blacks out for a few seconds, just floating on that wave.

“ _Jesus,_ ” he croaks when he’s able to, his chest still heaving. Pagan rests his chin on his thigh and just beams at him with his eyes watering a bit, which puzzles him at first. And then muffles a cough.

“I tried to get you to move…c’mere,” he murmurs, tugging at his shoulder. He’s not gonna be good for much more, not after that, like Pagan ran him through a ringer and then poured him out on this bed. But he pulls him up until Pagan’s on top of him, takes in his flushed face and his warm little smile, nearly glowing and all proud of himself.

“Worth it, dear boy…so worth it.” His voice is a little raspy, but so smugly satisfied.

Another time, he’ll have to reciprocate that way. Just the idea of there maybe being other times makes him shiver a little. Maybe a lot of them, he sure hopes so.

He reaches for that little bottle of oil and this time, it’s his turn to grin when Pagan rocks into his oily hand with his eyes half closed.

“ _Fuck,_ that’s good,” Pagan manages to grunt out.

“Should’ve done this too, that night out there,” he murmurs in his ear, and Pagan braces himself and ruts into his fist in earnest with little panting breaths.

The way that he’s propped over him makes him think about how he might…might feel _inside_ him; it’d be so easy to wrap his legs around Pagan’s hips and pull him in, he’d be right there and could slide into him the way his fingers did, the way he slides easily into his slippery fist. Or the other way, holding Pagan real close and easing his way into him good and slow, how warm he’d be inside…

Another time, the thought of it glowing in his middle.

Muscles bunch and relax under his fingers as he runs his other hand up Pagan’s back, along the divot of his spine. Hot and flushed all up his chest and throat and starting to sweat, already wound up good and tight just from getting _him_ all wound up.

Something about that also glows warm down deep in him, especially when he looks into his eyes and can see the smile in them, the way they sparkle in the firelight. He strokes his hand up to the back of his neck to touch the velvety spot behind his ear, the tender skin of his throat, raising his head to press his lips there. Wanting to find all his softest places.

“Let go, I got you,” he whispers against that tender skin. “You’re real close now, I can tell. Want to see you come for me…”

Which is a little embarrassing to say out loud, even if it is true. But Pagan groans and shudders all over and obliges him, with hot pulses against his hip and over his fingers.

The deep satisfaction in that and in the way that Pagan more or less collapses on him in a sweating, sticky, panting tangle also manages to surprise him. When his ribs start to creak a little under Pagan’s bigger frame, he takes hold of him and rolls them over, and then just…doesn’t bother to let go. Not when Pagan leans his head against his shoulder, also deeply satisfied, if the curve of his mouth and his heavy-lidded eyes are anything to go by.

  
A little later, Ajay lies beside him and drowsily watches the play of firelight across Pagan’s face. So much peace in it while he’s sleeping. Something about the way his long lashes rest across his cheeks and the angles of his face in the light make him look strangely...pretty, in a way he couldn’t describe if you paid him.

What they are or what they want, what he himself wants out of this he has no idea, but he can’t deny the perfection of this very moment: Pagan’s body nestled warm against his under the heavy quilts, the fire crackling as the snow falls thickly outside, them together in this nest, the safe den that is Pagan’s big bed.

Not all of those long years of wandering he did was necessarily running. Maybe a lot of it was seeking, searching for something that he couldn’t put a name to.

_Maybe he’s part of what I was looking for and didn’t even know it._

But where they go from here, he has no idea.

Ajay reaches over to ghost a thumb over one of his eyebrows, to brush his recalcitrant hair out of his eye.

“I’m real glad that you could forgive me for being such a fucking idiot,” he whispers, so softly it’s hardly louder than a breath. “When I said that about only caring about you ‘cause it was my job to? Well…I lied.”

“I know,” Pagan says with his eyes still closed, making him start a little. He had been sure that he was asleep.

He thinks that over. “I guess I’m an awful liar, huh?”

“Yes, you really are spectacularly bad at it. Which might be a good thing, you being the local authority and all.” He says it a bit dubiously though, as if he’s struggling to think of a scenario where it’d pay to be honest.

“Speakin’ of which, I really ought to be getting…”

“Please stay,” Pagan says quietly. “Just for tonight.” His mouth twists unhappily like he hates to even ask, hates the vulnerability of it, the possibility of being rebuffed. Or maybe just hates that his answer might be no.

“I…” The asking tugs at his heart in unexpected ways, a little glowing coal in his chest as he scoots even closer. _Please._ “Yeah, I’ll stay with you.”

Pagan fixes him with that hard, dark stare, but he doesn’t take offense to it. He understands. He leans in and runs a hand up his side and kisses him, nudging at his mouth with his to show that there’s no reluctance on his part, that it’s not misplaced pity that made him say yes, or any shit like that. They kiss each other soft and slow and there’s a sweetness to it that he wasn’t expecting. Pagan makes a little pleased sound, muffled against his lips and slides a hand into his hair and just melts into him like butter.

 _Big softie,_ Ajay thinks with affection.

They fall asleep like that, with his arm draped over his side and Pagan’s hand still cradling his head.

  
  
***

It’s been one of those gray winter days where you look out the window and it could be six in the morning or six in the evening, or any time in between. Dark and snowy. He figured Ajay’d be back by now though. He’ll give it another half-hour, Hurk decides, before he goes hunting for him, and makes a careful, considered stroke with the knife and watches the resulting curl of wood fall away from the badger’s back with satisfaction.

Exactly thirty minutes later, according to the big grandfather clock in the corner, he hangs the ‘Be Back Soon’ sign in the office window.

Once he gets far enough out of town and away from the mingled tracks of horses and carriages and wagons, it’s easy enough to pick up Daisy’s trail, even though it’s been snowing hard enough to blur their tracks some. Not that he’s much afraid of Min doing anything real _stupid,_ but it always pays to be careful, as he pushes his own horse to a quick trot.

When he gets to the turnoff there’s no tracks leaving the place, just Ajay’s going in, he notes, as he rides up to the barn. Inside he finds Daisy and that cussed horse of Min’s placidly eating hay together. Hurk scowls at him and rubs at his shoulder, still bruised with the marks of horsey teeth after that sonofabitch nearly took a chunk out of him. He leaves his own horse tethered inside and follows the trail of Ajay’s old sprung boots up to the house, and some instinct urges him to go quietly as he climbs the couple of steps up to the porch.

The window beside the door has a patch on the top right-hand pane where it’s a little less frosty than the other three. He carefully wipes at the same spot with his sleeve and takes a look.

A fine, warm-looking room with a big bed in the corner. And in that bed, barely visible above the thick quilt are two dark heads nestled side by side, sharing the same pillow.

Well, he’s seen all he needs to see.

“‘Bout goddamn time,” he mutters almost inaudibly to himself. “Was wonderin’ when you two dipshits’d figure it out.”

With that, he sneaks off the porch without a sound, not even letting the snow squeak under his boots. Partly not to disturb the lovebirds, but also because Min’s likely to barrel out of there without a stitch on and get all shooty if he hears somebody sneakin’ around his place. Everybody knows that he tends to be a little bit…territorial. As he’s quietly leading his horse out of the barn he glances up at the sky, the short afternoon already giving way to dark.

Hurk mounts up and rides back down the lane to Elk River, looking forward to the coffee simmering on the potbelly stove at the office, and supper, and getting back to his carving.

***


	8. Epilogue: A Kind of Beautiful

***

Ajay wakes alone to bright winter sun bouncing off the snow and blazing through the gaps in the curtains, thoroughly disoriented and hungry as a bear. Shit. Shit shit _shit,_ as he sits up in a hurry. It’s probably at least eight, with another hour tacked onto that for the ride back. Hurk’s gonna be worried about him, especially if he walks over and knocks on his door and he’s not there either. He scrambles out from under the quilt to find his clothes neatly folded at the foot of the bed. On top is a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper and a scrawled note.

_I’m out in the yard._

_Forgive me for not waking you, but you were sleeping so peacefully._

As he’s throwing his clothes on he peers outside and squints against the glare, and sure enough Pagan’s out in front of the barn, bundled up against the cold and thankfully with Daisy already saddled, her reins tossed over the fence. He has the curry combs out and has obviously been working at her for a while now, judging by the way her buckskin coat shines in the bright sun, Daisy's eyes closed in bliss. That horse always was a sucker for a good brushing.

Sly, getting to a man’s heart through his horse. Though it’s not like he hasn’t already wriggled pretty far in on his own, as he slides the sandwich into his coat pocket gratefully.

The little note he tucks into his shirt pocket, for safekeeping.

The next few minutes are an awkward flurry of getting his boots on and jogging down the front steps, in too much of a hurry to notice Hurk’s footprints in the snow. Pagan hands over Daisy’s reins without a word and he searches for what to say as he swings up into the saddle but, like usual, can’t really find it. Sorely regrets having to be in such a hurry to go, to have to run off with that heavy feeling of things unsaid between them.

Pagan walks him out to the road with his gloved hand on Daisy’s shoulder, and he can’t even see his face from above, just the crown of his hat. No idea what he might be thinking. Daisy jigs under him a little once they’re out on the lane, eager to be off, but he reins her in for a moment as Pagan looks up at him.

Ajay gazes down into his upturned face, and what he sees there might be some sort of quiet longing. That look flutters warm but a little bittersweet in his chest, and without even thinking about it he leans down and cups his chin in his hand and Pagan stretches up and their lips meet with warm breath and cold noses, and while it’s awkward as they try not to knock each other’s hats off and Daisy jostles them, it’s also a kind of beautiful.

As he pulls away, Pagan’s eyes have that dark sparkle in them. And then they crinkle at the corners with his warm smile. The one that only he gets to see.

“Lean down again,” he says huskily, and when he does Pagan reaches up and quickly unwinds his maroon scarf and loops it around his neck, tucks it neatly down under his upturned collar. All warm from his body and smelling of cedar and his shaving soap and him.

As he canters off, he can’t help but look back at Pagan standing in the lane, a tall dark figure watching him go. And keeps looking back, again and again, until a bend in the road hides him behind snowy trees.

When he gets to the office Hurk doesn’t even ask why he’s late or why he happens to be wearing Pagan Min’s scarf or why he’s walking around like a man in a dream, or where that big ol’ egg and bacon sandwich came from that he unwraps at his desk and eats with such relish. Ajay might have noticed this concerning lack of questions if he hadn’t been in such a warm daze, or how Hurk watches him from across the room with a glint of humor in his blue eyes.

Much later, Ajay shuffles his boots on the worn floorboards and looks out the window at the waning afternoon light. Distracted as all hell. Been distracted all day, just warm fuzz in his brain. On impulse, he runs his fingers over that scarf and with a surreptitious glance over his shoulder to make sure Hurk’s not watching, picks it up and inhales.

And suddenly yearns to be back there again. Back to where it smells like this, with _him_ in that warm house nestled in the snow. A longing so sharp that it startles him with its intensity, a twisting around his heart.

“I’m, uh…gonna head on back out to Cedarwood,” he says to Hurk, still looking out the window. He rubs at his chest absently. “There’s something I still, y’know, still need to talk to Min about.”

“Yep, sure thing Boss. I’ll lock up here’n a bit.” In his preoccupation, Ajay never notices how Hurk tucks his chin down to hide his grin in his gingery beard.

With a lantern hung over his saddle horn and some extra clothes and stuff packed up in an old flour sack, the mingled scent of cedar and Pagan’s warm skin around his own throat draws him on back down that same stretch of snowy road. Back to where, perhaps, he ought to be. It feels like that a little, anyway.

An hour later, he comes around that same bend in the road and finds Pagan standing there in the very same spot. A shadow in the waning dusk, like he had never moved, waiting for him to come in the last of the light.

Wonders how he knew, when he didn’t even know himself.

“Sheriff,” Pagan says, with a touch at his hat brim in greeting when he rides up to him. A little joke served up with a wry smile, but this time when he says it there’s so much warmth in his voice, so much gladness.

Ajay slides out of the saddle, intending to hold his arms out for him; he’s been thinking about it all ride. But when he turns, he discovers Pagan right there beside him, ready to gather him up in his own.

As they walk up to the barn together, he realizes that maybe words aren’t that necessary after all. He reaches out with the hand that’s not holding Daisy’s reins and takes Pagan’s gently, entwining their fingers. Pagan gives his hand a little squeeze, and when Ajay glances over he can see the sweet curve of his smile in the lantern light.

  
And that, as they say, had been that.

More than two years have passed since then.

Their fingers are still entwined on this fine day in autumn, as they often are when they sit out on the porch to watch the sun going down in the evenings. Sometimes they have a scotch or two or pass one of the particularly fine cigars that Pagan favors back and forth contentedly, but mostly they just sit and hold hands and survey their domain like kings.

It only took a few months of tedious riding back and forth before he decided to go ahead and turn the reins over to Hurk and move on out there, much to Pagan’s delight. Sheriff Drubman’s a much better fit for the job, always was. Has a way with people that he simply lacks. There’s a lot more to sheriffing than just being a good shot and good at walloping fellows upside the head, but he did just that when Elk River needed him to. The way he sees it, he’s played his part and done his duty, and now he can retire and give Hurk his turn at it. Especially now that folks are more or less behaving themselves.

Besides, there’s something about Hurk’s cheerful face and firm handshake that actually gets folks to pay up during tax time, miracle of miracles. He has his own deputy now too, nice kid that he’s showing the ropes.

Hurk’s also the only one in town that knows about those warrants of Pagan’s.

Had to tell him, when he would’ve rather not. Not because he’s one bit ashamed of Pagan or anything he’s done to get them, but because the fewer folks that know the better. Hurk needed to know it, but he also needed him to know that he has something else here worth fighting for. Someone. That same fiery indignation bubbles up inside him whenever he thinks of anybody fucking with them, with what they have together.

“I’m telling you this, ‘cause if some shitbag bounty hunters or some posse from California or hell, even the U.S. Marshals come sniffing around here looking for him, well…there’s gonna be blood. He’s not about to just sit back and let anybody hang him, and I’m _sure_ as fuck not going to either. I don’t give a tin-plated shit who they are, I’ll be right there beside him loaded for bear, you understand me? I hope it never comes to it, but I’ll put any bunch of motherfuckers that try to take him in the _ground._ ” He had scuffed his boot toe in the dirt and cleared his throat, just a little embarrassed at how he’d gotten carried away and all growly about it. “Anyway…I guess you should know that.”

Ajay had expected him to be shocked or maybe even pissed at his vehemence, but Hurk only nodded solemnly.

“I understand you, and his business won’t go further’n me. If I get wind of somethin’ like that, I’ll do my best to head ‘em off. Kinda…encourage ‘em to look elsewhere.” He rearranged his face into a sort of vacant, slack-jawed expression. “Why, I heard that just last week that a man matchin’ his description was last seen hightailing it for Taos like the devil was on his heels and gaining ground! That’s what I’ll say.”

Ajay had laughed in relief. “I sure would appreciate it.” That conversation had gone much better than he’d hoped. He had been nearly certain that telling Hurk all this wouldn’t end up with him gathering up such a posse and _leading_ it, coming after them with some misplaced notion of justice, but he’d let out a held breath all the same.

“Well, I owe you ‘bout ten-thousand favors, the way I see it, for keeping that hellion at home gettin’ a little tipsy with you instead of roaring drunk down at Paul’s and bein’ a royal pain in my ass. I thank you from the bottom of my newly-appointed heart for that.”

“Consider ‘em all paid off. You were the one that told me to go on out there and take his stuff to him that day.”

“Yep, that I did,” Hurk said, with a little wink and a tiny hint of smugness.

If the façade that Pagan throws up like a wall is one of blithe smartassery, then the one that Hurk employs is that of the cheerful dumbass; likable, but not too bright to be threatening.

Neither one has much truth to it.

Outside in the sun and clean wind doing honest, hard work were always the times in his life when he was the happiest, and he’s certainly missed that during his stint as a lawman. The place isn’t nearly so derelict anymore either, now that he’s been whipping it into shape. While it’ll probably never be a working ranch, he’s getting it to where it _could_ be, if they wanted. Pagan doesn’t give a shit what he does with it, just as long as nobody fucks with his books and his little vegetable patch.

Last spring was when he discovered that they have an orchard.

The once neat rows of apple trees had been buried by at least a decade’s worth of brushy growth, maybe more. He’d been doing some clearing in the next field over, and while he couldn’t see them, he sure could smell them. The sweet scent of apple blossoms in the spring. Intrigued, he went on a hunt, tramping through scrubby young pines and last year’s leaf piles and this year’s new brambles, until he stumbled out into a little clearing.

He’d never seen anything so pretty as that little corner of an apple orchard gone wild.

New grass under his boots, so vibrantly green it almost hurt to look at in the sun. The trees had gone all knotty and needed a lot of pruning, but they were still good and healthy and bursting out all over with blossoms in the warmth. Some barely tinged with pink, others pure white, their petals drifting like fragrant snow across the grass. He didn’t even have words, for how pretty it was. Though even if he did, they could never capture the contrast of warm sun with cool breeze and the rich, clean, bursting with life smell of that little clearing.

With a last deep inhale, he had turned on his heel and strode back up to the house to get Pagan. He’d gotten a little snarly about being pulled away from the book he was reading to go look at anything so pedestrian as _trees,_ but he didn’t give a shit how snappish he got. Needed to get him out of the stuffy house anyway, and watching his face transform from bored cynicism to that look of wonder had made it all worth it. Ajay hadn’t been able to resist that expression on his face, the smells, that beauty, overwhelmed by the life bubbling up inside of him too.

He had turned and tackled Pagan to the emerald grass.

When Pagan sat up and slowly smiled at him instead of cussing him for it, he could tell that he felt it too. That feeling of being so fucking _alive._ They had rolled around laughing and shoving each other like boys and he completely threw the inevitable wrestling match that followed. Would’ve been difficult not to, what with Pagan straddling him and breathing hard and looking down at him with that cocky little grin that he secretly loves, a few snowy petals caught in his dark hair.

As they gazed at each other, a perfect, puffy white cloud had scudded across the expanse of blue sky above them and Ajay couldn’t seem to stop staring at his lips, until Pagan leaned down to brush his mouth against his.

They had emerged hours later, flushed and a little dazed, both of them all stained up with grass and so jelly-legged that they had to lean on each other to get back up to the house.

A perfect, perfect day. A man just doesn’t get many of those in his life. And when Ajay had started in on the pruning and cleaning out the brush and getting those trees back to making good apples again, he left that one little wild corner of it untouched, for them.

It’s not all hard work though; he’s supposed to be retired after all, not a draft horse. He also fishes in the creeks and does a little hunting for their suppers and when the weather’s bad out, they often don’t even bother to get out of bed. Snug and happy and making love and napping together in their safe den.

When he starts getting antsy to roam he doesn’t have to sit in that office and squirm like the walls are closing in. He gets some gear together and him and Daisy head up into the endless pine forests and camp out for a few days of solitude. Three days of wandering the hills alone is plenty to make that feeling go away and to get to where he’s tired of sleeping on the cold ground. But even if he didn’t, he’d never stay gone for more than that because at noon on the third day, Pagan always rides up to the trailhead to meet him.

If he had any skill at drawing he’d want to sketch him that way, as he appears out of a roll in the land: tall, dark rider on a big bay horse, the Winchester angled over his saddlebow, gazing out over the Front Range as he waits for him. His back held so straight and proud. His man.

Ajay misses him so fiercely on those trips, but the reunion is all the sweeter for it when he rides up beside him and grabs hold of him and squeezes tight. Pagan clutches him right back and he always kisses his throat and nuzzles his nose down inside his collar to get a big lungful of cedar and sun-dried cotton and that smell that’s just him. His good smell that's the smell of home, as Pagan nudges his head up with his to kiss him.

Their horses are familiar with this routine and contentedly occupy themselves by grooming each other’s hindquarters. They wait patiently for their people to finish their odd ritual of wrapping their arms around each other and pressing their mouths together so they can all go back to the ranch.

Pagan might not be the easiest man to put up with, prickly-proud and temperamental and with a tendency to jabber on and fucking _on_ , but it was so easy to love him. Always has been. He also understands him like nobody else in his life ever has, and that always made it easy to stay.

This particular evening, Pagan has his feet propped up on the old barrel that serves as a footstool and his hat pulled down low, and Ajay knows he’s gone and drifted off just from the way his hand twitches a little in his from time to time. They’re both about worn out from dragging deadwood out of the forest with Beau and Daisy hitched up together, getting it chopped and stored for the winter.

The days are getting shorter and shorter. Not much time now, before the snows come again.

Now that the light’s almost gone, the brisk breeze gets a downright edge to it as it gusts across the porch in a skirling of red and gold leaves. He gives Pagan’s hand a little pat and gets up to fetch the old horse blanket they keep out here for just this purpose. Pagan stirs a little as he gets him covered up and pushes his hat back, but he pulls it right down again.

“Shhh. Go back to sleep for awhile, cowboy.”

The soft curve of his smile is something that he’s pretty sure is never going to stop giving him that little fluttering feeling in his chest. Pagan mumbles something that he can’t really make out, except _love you._

In answer to that, Ajay plants a little kiss on his earlobe. He toes his boots off and sneaks across the porch in his sock feet and goes inside, to see about what they might have for their supper.

Not just Pagan’s ranch anymore either; Cedarwood belongs to him now too. He had Ajay’s name put on the deed last year and he had signed it with Hurk as witness, and while they’ll never wear rings that’s as good as married in his book. Something that’s theirs together.

Two wanderers from so far away, who managed to find home again.

End

***

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments/ideas/suggestions welcome!


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